PREGNANT women at 24 weeks gestation will receive priority access to COVID vaccinations at state run clinics with seven pregnant women in hospital with the virus including one woman in intensive care.
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There were 450 new cases of COVID recorded in Victoria with eight cases in regional Victoria.
Health Minister Martin Foley said as of Sunday any woman who was pregnant from 24 weeks onwards would be able to get priority access through any of state run vaccine centres in the same context that front line health care workers and aged care workers have been able to.
Dr Ryan Hodges, the Head of Perinatal Health at Monash Health, said what his team had seen over the past week had caused alarm and they were worried.
"We have lots of women now who are very sick, who are very high risk of having their babies that need to be born early, we know that in pregnancy that Coronavirus infections mean that you're five times more likely to need to come to us at Monash," he said.
"And when you do come to us at Monash there's a one in three chance that you're going to need oxygen therapy. There's a one in seven chance that you're going be in intensive care.
"There's a one in two chance you're going to need emergency delivery of your baby. There's a one in two chance of cesarean section and there's a one in four chance that your baby will need to be born prematurely
"You're twice as likely to have a stillborn. This is what we're seeing from the Delta variant of the coronavirus."
Dr Hodges said the Monash data reflected what had been happening in North America, the UK and in Europe
"At the moment at Monash Women's we have seven women who are pregnant who are in hospital, one of whom is in intensive care at 24 weeks gestation with a 600 gram baby," he said. "She's unwell.
"We have 26 weeks, we have 28 weeks, we have 30 weeks. These are very high risk of needing extreme premature births due to the degree of their infection.
"We have also looked after in the last few days women at 38 weeks who are giving birth in our hospital when their support persons and other people are at home sick. They have been unable to come to hospital."
Dr Hodges said care during pregnancy needed to shift from what to avoid to keep the baby safe to what can be done to keep the baby safe.
"That is vaccination," he said.
Dr Hodges said there had been over 200,000 women in the US and the UK who had the Pfizer vaccine in pregnancy.
"We know it is safe," he said.
"It does not increase the risk of miscarriage. It does not increase the risk of abnormalities in your baby. It does not increase pregnancy complications.
"It prevents severe disease. It prevents you coming to Monash to having your baby born early and put into our intensive care unit.
"Overwhelming the women and families that we are looking after are not vaccinated.
"What we are seeing is not like what we saw in the last wave, this is not what we see with influenza.
"Never would I have seven sick women in hospital with influenza, this is different."
Health Minister Martin Foley said there were five cases in Greater Geelong, one in Cohuna, one in Daylesford and one in Beveridge. He said the majority were linked to community interactions with metropolitan Melbourne.
Mr Foley said there were cases linked to construction industry and the time for handing out warnings for those in the construction industry had passed.
He said there were now 407 children under nine who currently had coronavirus, with 449 children aged between 10 and 19 years affected by the virus.
There are 97 people in their 20s and 485 people in their 30s have COVID-19.
There are 2793 active cases in Victoria, all but four are locally acquired.
Mr Foley said the Delta varian continued to disproportionately affect people who were under 50.
There are 143 people in hospital - an increase of 17 since yesterday - with 34 people in intensive care. Of those in ICU, 26 are on ventilators.
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