Results
A total of 6779 pregnant patients attended to our Maternity unscheduled triaging system, of which 79 had suspected COVID-19 symptoms for which nasopharyngeal sample for RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid were taken. 23/79 (29%) of patients had confirmed COVID-19 infection based on the RT-PCT test. The number of confirmed Cases increased from 8 in February to 77 cases in April (Figure 1).
Out of 23 positively diagnosed mothers, the majority 15/23 (65.2%) had mild clinical manifestations, whilst 8/23 (21.7%) had more severe symptoms. Most of these 16/23 (70%) are of Asian ethnic backgrounds (i.e. Indian, Pakistani, or Arabic sub-continent), 1/23 (4.3%) is of African ethnic background, whilst 3/23 (13%) of UK Caucasian, and the remaining 3/23 (13%) were Europeans (Table 1). Among the confirmed cases, most were aged 20-39 years 21/23 (91.3%), and only 2/23 (8.7%) of cases occurred in patients aged 0–19 years (Figure 2).
The clinical characteristics, maternal outcomes of pregnant women with COVID-19 infection