Abstract: Background: The Global pandemic caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-COV 2) has been growing at an accelerating and the first case was reported from Wuhan, China in December 2019. Pregnant women generally do not appear more likely to contract the infection than the general population. But the anatomical and physiological changes that take place in the pregnancy make pregnant women more vulnerable to severe infections. Hence we aimed to conduct a study on pregnancies affected by COVID-19 and present a report of the maternal and perinatal outcomes in those affected pregnancies.
Materials and Methods: It is a hospital-based prospective observational study conducted in a tertiary care center, Government General hospital, Kakinada from august to October 2020. A total of 300 antenatal women with more than 28 weeks period of gestation who were tested COVID-19 were included.
Results: The majority of women belong to the age group of 21 to 25 years (43%) and the majority were primigravida (56%). Among the COVID-19 positive pregnant women majority were Asymptomatic (63%) in the symptomatic women, the major symptoms were cold and cough (15%) followed by fever (10%), sore throat (7%) and shortness of breath (5%). Out of 300 cases there were five maternal death (1.6%). Out of 265 babies delivered, there were 25 NICU admissions and of those there were three neonatal deaths. Two babies (0.75%) were tested COVID positive and were asymptomatic and discharged healthy.
Conclusion: Reported cases of COVID-19 pneumonia in pregnancy are mild with good recovery. Materno-foetal transmission of SARS COV 2 virus was not detected in majority of cases. Close monitoring of COVID-19 pregnancies and measures to prevent neonatal infection are warranted.
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