Maternal and neonatal outcomes of pregnant women with COVID-19 pneumonia: a case-control study

Na Li; Lefei Han; Min Peng; Yuxia Lv; Yin Ouyang; Kui Liu; Linli Yue; Qiannan Li; Guoqiang Sun; Lin Chen; Lin Yang

We retrospectively reviewed medical records of pregnant women who were admitted into the Hubei Provincial Maternal and Child Health Center, a tertiary hospital in Wuhan with 1,900 hospital beds, during January 24 -February 29, 2020. We followed the clinical diagnosis criteria for COVID-19 pneumonia in the New Coronavirus Pneumonia Prevention and Control Program (5th edition) by the National Health Commission of China [15] . Throat swabs were collected from all these patients and sent to the laboratory of the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention for tests of SARS-CoV-2. Diagnosis criteria of COVID-19 infection include 1) typical chest CT imaging of patchy shadows and ground glass opacity, and 2) positive in reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests for SARS-CoV-2. However, previous studies argued that false negative cases might be common for COVID-19 infection cases due to low virus titers, sampling at late stage of illness, and inappropriate swabbing sites [7] . Given overloaded healthcare systems and limited test capacities during our study period, we were concerned about underreporting of COVID-19 cases if solely relying on laboratory tests. Therefore, in this study we also included the suspected patients with typical chest CT imaging but negative in RT-PCR tests. Eleven pregnant women who were tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were classified as laboratory confirmed case group, and eighteen with typical chest CT imaging but tested negative in RT-PCR tests as suspected case group.