HOW DOES COVID AFFECT MOTHER AND BABY?

Researchers want to know how widespread COVID-19 infection is among pregnant women overall, because the majority of the data are collected from women who end up in hospital for any reason during their pregnancy. In January, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that the messenger RNA vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech be offered only to pregnant women at highest risk - those working in frontline positions or with existing health conditions - and only after consultation with their physician. Health-care workers should be made aware that pregnant women are less likely than non-pregnant women to show symptoms of COVID-19, says Shakila Thangaratinam, a maternal and perinatal health researcher at the University of Birmingham, UK, who led the analysis4 of the 77 studies. According to Thangaratinam's analysis4, pregnant women with COVID-19 had three times the odds of delivering preterm compared with those without the disease.