Transmission & Prevention
· Immune thrombocytopenia was found in a 22-year-old post COIVD-19 vaccine: A hematologist from Advocate Aurora Health in Wisconsin presents the case of a 22-year-old male with no history of bleeding or autoimmune disease who presented with widespread petechiae and gum bleeding 3 days post-Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The patient had severe thrombocytopenia (2x10^9/L) and was given a platelet transfusion on admission followed by intravenous immunoglobulin and dexamethasone. He was discharged on day 6 with a platelet count of 28 x10^9/L, which normalized by day 11 (173x10^9/L) . Authors suggest this patient's autoimmune thrombocytopenia (ITP) may have been induced by vaccine administration, but recognize ITP is common and further studies are needed to better evaluate this potential side effect.
Silver Linings
· Stillbirths were not found to be correlated with the COVID-19 pandemic in England. Public health researchers from England compared data from a single London hospital with national and regional hospitalization data (annual Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data, monthly data available as Secondary Uses Service and data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) civil deaths registrations for stillbirths) to investigate whether the rate of stillbirths had increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. They found there were 2,825 stillbirths between April 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020, with the highest proportion of stillbirth deliveries reported in London (145/26 760; 0.54% [95% CI, 0.46%-0.64%]). Nationally, no evidence of any increase above baseline during the pandemic period was found. For individual regions, there was no significant difference between the rate of stillbirth deliveries between the lockdown period and the same period the year prior. They suggest that while it is important to continue monitoring pregnancy outcomes as the pandemic continues to unfold, these findings are reassuring in light of concerns over access to prenatal services for pregnant patients during the pandemic.
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