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Pregnancy and COVID: what the data say

Pregnant women fare worse than others, although the risks to the fetus are slight.
  1. Nidhi Subbaraman
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A heavily pregnant woman wearing a face masks and red t-shirt walks through a crowd amid feast day celebration in Venezuela

A pregnant woman attends a celebration in Caracas. Data show that pregnant women face increased risks from SARS-CoV-2 infection. Credit: Manaure Quintero/Reuters

Yalda Afshar was about two months pregnant when reports of COVID-19 began to emerge in the United States in February last year. As an obstetrician managing high-risk pregnancies at the University of California, Los Angeles, Afshar knew that respiratory viruses are especially dangerous to pregnant women. There was very little data on the effects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and, as cases racked up, she felt like she was flying blind, both while advising her patients and in navigating her own worries about contracting the virus and passing it on to her baby and family. But her situation also brought her closer to the women she was treating. “I had this sense of solidarity that I’ve not felt before,” she says. “It was an inspiration to just work harder and try to get answers faster.”

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Nature 591, 193-195 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00578-y

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