Children and COVID-19 Research Library

Public health responses often lack the infrastructure to capture the impact of public health emergencies on pregnant women and infants, with limited mechanisms for linking pregnant women with their infants nationally to monitor long-term effects. In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in close collaboration with state, local, and territorial health departments, began a 5-year initiative to establish population-based mother–baby linked longitudinal surveillance, the Surveillance for Emerging Threats to Mothers and Babies Network (SET-NET). The objective of this report is to describe an expanded surveillance approach that leverages and modernizes existing surveillance systems to address the impact of emerging health threats during pregnancy on pregnant women and their infants.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of expectant parents and parents of young babies, with disruptions in health care provision and loss of social support. Objective: This study investigated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lockdown on this population through the lens of users of the UK National Health Service–approved pregnancy and parenting smartphone app, Baby Buddy. The study aims were threefold: to gain insights into the attitudes and experiences of expectant and recent parents (with babies under 24 weeks of age) during the COVID-19 pandemic; to investigate whether Baby Buddy is meeting users’ needs during this time; and to identify ways to revise the content of Baby Buddy to better support its users now and in future.

Pregnant women with SARS-CoV-2 infection are at increased risk for severe illness compared with nonpregnant women. Adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preterm birth and pregnancy loss have been reported. Among 3,912 infants with known gestational age born to women with SARS-CoV-2 infection, 12.9% were preterm (<37 weeks), higher than a national estimate of 10.2%. Among 610 (21.3%) infants with testing results, 2.6% had positive SARS-CoV-2 results, primarily those born to women with infection at delivery. These findings can inform clinical practice, public health practice, and policy. It is important that providers counsel pregnant women on measures to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), resulting from infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), can affect pregnant women. Their newborns are at a higher risk of prematurity and early separation from their mothers, who may subsequently require intensive care for their own health. Although neonates born of mothers infected with SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy are seemingly vulnerable to infection, studies have found that they were not at a high risk for severe infection and were very rarely affected by COVID-19. The presence of virus by real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) has been reported in newborns before H 12 of life. In addition, antiviral immunoglobulin M has been detected in newborns at birth, suggesting that mother-to-infant viral transmission may occur. To date, however, only one case of vertical transmission has been clearly demonstrated. In several cases of early neonatal infection, postnatal contamination cannot be excluded. Moreover, only one case report found that the virus could pass from mother to infant through the mother’s breast milk.

Preterm birth is the leading cause of child mortality globally, with many survivors experiencing long-term adverse consequences. Preliminary evidence suggests that numbers of preterm births greatly reduced following implementation of policy measures aimed at mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 mitigation measures implemented in the Netherlands on the incidence of preterm birth through a national quasi-experimental difference-in-regression-discontinuity approach.

Stress is one of the effective factors in the occurrence of negative effects during pregnancy that can cause adverse outcomes such as preterm delivery and reduced intrauterine growth of the fetus in pregnant women. Therefore, one of the serious concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic is the physical health and mental health of pregnant women. This study aimed to evaluate the physical health status with the spiritual and mental health of pregnant women during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is a descriptive study in 2019–2020 and the samples were randomly selected from all pregnant women who referred to hospitals and private maternity centers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and performed all pregnancy and fetal health tests.

Limited information suggests that pregnant women with COVID-19 might be at increased risk for severe illness compared with non-pregnant women. In an analysis of approximately 400,000 women aged 15–44 years with symptomatic COVID-19, intensive care unit admission, invasive ventilation, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and death were more likely in pregnant women than in non-pregnant women. Pregnant women should be counseled about the risk for severe COVID-19–associated illness including death; measures to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2 should be emphasized for pregnant women and their families. These findings can inform clinical practice, risk communication, and medical countermeasure allocation.

This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on pregnant women. PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science have been searched for qualified studies. The clinical characteristics of pregnant women with COVID-19 and their infants were reported as means and proportions with 95% confidence interval. Eleven studies involving with 9032 pregnant women with COVID-19 and 338 infants were included in the meta-analysis. Pregnant women with COVID-19 have relatively mild symptoms. However, abnormal proportions of laboratory parameters were similar or even increased, compared to general population.

This study aims to examine pregnancy and birth planning during COVID-19 and the effects of a tele- education offered to pregnant women for this planning process on prenatal distress and pregnancy-related anxiety. The population of this quasi-experimental study was composed of pregnant women who applied for the antenatal education class of a public hospital in the east of Turkey during their past prenatal follow-ups and wrote their contact details in the registration book to participate in group trainings. The sample of the study consisted of a total of 96 pregnant women, including 48 in the experiment and 48 in the control groups, who were selected using power analysis and non-probability random sampling method.

The COVID-19 New Mum Study is recording maternal experiences and infant feeding during the UK lockdown. This report from week 1 of the survey describes and compares the delivery and post-natal experiences of women who delivered before the lockdown versus during the lockdown.