COVID-19 and Pregnancy

Please read the Society of Gynecologist of Canada Opinion paper on COVID-19 in Pregnancy on our COVID-19 Resource page, as the information below is summarized from there.

The article emphasizes that “due to physiological changes in women during pregnancy, those who experience lower respiratory tract infections often experience worse outcomes than their non pregnant counterparts”. With the SOGC drawing on knowledge of other respiratory illnesses in pregnancy as well as the previous SARS and MERS outbreaks, the adverse pregnancy outcomes were typically related to the severity of maternal respiratory compromise. COVID-19 will have similar effects on women and their fetuses as those of SARS or MERS.

According to the article, the data obtained from China indicate that the pregnancy outcomes from those women infected with COVID-19 have been generally good with only spontaneous preterm labour being the main adverse outcome reported. There have been no reports of transmission from mother to fetus, nor have there been any reports maternal infection with SARS/MERS/COVID-19 being associated with teratogencity (essentially the infection causing malformations).

Pregnancy is considered to be a high risk situation and all pregnant women are recommended to have the Covid vaccine at any time of pregnacy.