During the peak of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, there was an increase in maternal mortality in Chile. This is confirmed by a natural population experiment based on data from the Department of Health Statistics and Information (DEIS) of the Chilean Ministry of Health. The research was published in PLOS Global Public Health .
In a collaborative study, led by Professor Elard Koch, senior epidemiologist and founder of MELISA Institute (Chile), and conducted with a team of researchers from the Universidad Católica Sedes Sapientiae (Peru), the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina and the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires (Argentina) and the Universidad de Chile (Chile), assessed the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on maternal mortalityby specific causes during its hardest stage in Chile. For this, time series that exploit information from long-term annual trends were used, along with ARIMA models to predict expected mortality under the hypothesis that previous mortality trends would continue in the absence of the pandemic virus-related mortality burden. Epidemiologist Yordanis Enriquez Canto explains that maternal mortality trends were analyzed over time, comparing data from before and during the pandemic, through a natural experiment in which the effects of an event are observed without experimental manipulation.
This study revealed a significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on maternal mortality in Chile. Interestingly, the pandemic did not affect direct obstetric de.