New UK research has found evidence to suggest that pregnant women do not have a greater risk of experiencing severe COVID-19 than non-pregnant women.
The researchers estimated that 4.9 women out of every 1000 pregnant women were admitted to hospital with the virus, which suggests that pregnant women are not at a higher risk of experiencing severe illness. However, they note that the majority of women who did become severely ill and needed to go to hospital were in the late second or third trimester of pregnancy, which highlights the importance of social distancing during later pregnancy.
When the researchers analyzed how COVID-19 might affect the women's children, they found that outcomes for infants were on the whole good. Although one in five babies born to mothers hospitalized with COVID-19 were born premature and were admitted to a neonatal unit, less than 20 babies were born very premature, before 32 weeks.