Is there a risk to pregnant women?

Transcript

It’s an open question at the moment, the extent to which SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, affects pregnancy.

Small studies from China suggest, now remember, in China we are still only dealing with people who are in the later stages of pregnancy and who have delivered their babies.

We’re going to have to wait seven to nine months to see what happens to women who got infected, say in December and January what happens when they deliver their babies.  So we don’t know the answer to that question yet.

We know that influenza is bad for pregnancy but this isn’t influenza.

SARS, there was a little bit of evidence that there were problems in pregnancy.

The evidence to date from very small studies is that late in pregnancy there may be, pre-term delivery, may be a little fetal distress, but not major problems if you catch it in the third trimester of pregnancy towards the end.

But what happens if you catch it early is not known yet.