I want to consider the impact of COVID-19 on pregnant women this week. Based on the limited data available, it seems that the SARS-CoV-2 cannot pass on from an infected mother to the fetus. Based on a study published in the Lancet, all of the 9 pregnant women were alive and none of them were critically ill. Additionally, their babies were alive and there was no neonatal asphyxia. The amniotic fluid, breastmilk and cord blood were tested and none of them contained the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Based on these findings, they deduced that pregnant women were affected like any other non-pregnant adult of the same age. They also concluded that intrauterine vertical transmission of the virus is not possible since none of the babies tested positive for the virus.
Confirming the results for the previous study, an article in the Frontiers in Pediatrics shows similar results. This study considers four pregnant women who tested positive for COVID-19. All four of them were able to give birth to babies who were also alive. None of the infants tested positive for the virus in this study either and their birth weight was appropriate for their gestational age. Of the four women, three had fever and two had a cough and headache.
Comparing the COVID-19 virus and the other major coronavirus outbreaks, namely SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, there are some glaring differences. In the women infected SARS or MERS, they had critical maternal illness, spontaneous abortion or maternal death. The situation is markedly different in the case of COVID-19, as while some of the women did have fevers the highest reported temperature was 38.3 C and they didn’t have any critical maternal illness.
- By: Sanya Bansal