The article has been automatically translated into English by Google Translate from Russian and has not been edited.

Coronavirus and pregnancy: what is currently known

'13.03.2020'

Source: deti.mail.ru

The main thing is not to panic and wash your hands more often, reminds deti.mail.ru.

Photo: Shutterstock

Pregnant women already have a hard time in winter, as well as in early spring - in the midst of influenza and SARS. In 2020, another misfortune was added to these scourges - a new coronavirus, which only increased the fears and anxieties of expectant mothers. While specialists know little about how the disease caused by coronavirus infection passes COVID-19 in pregnant women and what effect this pathogen has on the fetus.

According to medical statistics, pregnant women on average harder to tolerate influenza and respiratory tract infections than ordinary women, because pregnancy affects the immune system in a certain way, and as the fetus grows, the load on the lungs increases and it becomes more difficult for the body to resist the virus.

However, the scarce data that doctors have at the beginning of March 2020 suggests that pregnant women have no higher risk of severe course of the disease caused by coronavirus and dangerous complications than anyone else. In any case, the authors of the report published by the World Health Organization at the end of February came to this conclusion. Analysis of information about 147 pregnant women infected with coronavirus showed that severe symptoms appeared in 12 of them (8%), and one condition became critical. The remaining pregnant women had the infection relatively easily.

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It is too early to talk about whether the illness of the mother affected their children, and if it did, then how. At least according to the results of a small study published on February 12 in The Lancet magazine, 9 newborns whose mothers became infected with coronavirus at the end of the third trimester were born healthy and the virus was not found in their blood.

True, doctors took special measures to exclude the infection of children from mothers - all women underwent a cesarean section, and immediately after the birth of the babies they were isolated.

“Fortunately, the virus does not appear to be transmitted“ vertically, ”from mother to fetus,” noted one of the authors, epidemiologist Wei Zhang of Northwestern University (USA). At the same time, he stressed that there is still no data on the consequences of infection of the mother in the first or second trimesters of pregnancy.

Since neither a vaccine for coronavirus, nor drugs for the virus pneumonia caused by it has been developed yet, the best measure of infection prevention for pregnant women, as for all other people, is frequent and, most importantly, proper hand washing - with soap and warm running water, doctors advise .

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Other recommendations for the prevention of infection for pregnant women are also no different from the recommendations that experts give to all other people: avoid contact with patients, try to be less in crowded places, walk more in the fresh air, eat right, do not get nervous and do not panic, therefore that stress weakens the immune system.

As for whether pregnant women leaving the house should wear a mask, then all experts unanimously say that this does not make sense.

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