Results
During the two-week period, 180 women underwent universal screening. Random sampling in the week following the introduction of universal screening selected 95 women, of which 81 completed the pre-screening questionnaire (85.26% completion rate). Of the 110 women eligible for the post-screening telephone survey, 79 participants completed the survey (71.82% completion rate). Reasons for non-completion of the pre-screening survey included active labour deterring completion of the survey, with the language barrier being a reason for non-completion of the post-screening survey.
Patient demographics for both the pre-screening and post-screening cohorts are presented in Table 1. There was no statistical difference between the groups in terms of parity, occupation, highest education level, ethnicity, and ability to speak English. Nevertheless, there was a statistically significant difference between home occupancy between the pre-screening cohort (mean=3.21, SD = 2.338) and the post-screening cohort (mean=4.86, SD = 2.453), p = <0.05.
On the pre-screening questionnaire, 82.72% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that they would be happy if the maternity unit offered screening for all pregnant women for COVID-19 on admission to hospital, with 12.35% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. 93.83% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that having the COVID-19 test would have a positive effect on the care provided to both themselves and their babies, with 1.23% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. 88.89% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that the test would have a positive effect on their families, with 3.70% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. The remaining participants neither agreed nor disagreed with the above statements.
The post-screening questionnaire showed that 94.94% of participants agreed that they would be happy if their maternity unit offered screening to all pregnant women for COVID-19 on admission to hospital. Although 74.68 % of respondents strongly agreed or agreed that having the COVID-19 test had a positive effect on the care provided to both themselves and their babies, 11.39% disagreed or strongly disagreed. Similarly, 69.62% of the participants either strongly agreed or agreed that the test had a positive effect on their families with 10.13% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. Post-screening, there was a significant shift towards women agreeing with the statement that they would be happy if their maternity units offered screening for COVID-19 to all pregnant women on admission to hospital.
Nulliparous women were significantly more likely to agree that screening for COVID-19 would have or had a positive effect on their own and their babies care as compared to multiparous women. Nulliparous women were also more likely to agree that screening would have or had a positive effect on their families. There were no other significant associations between demographical factors and answers to statements.
Table 2 summarises responses to statements in the pre-screening cohort. Table 3 summarises responses to statements in the post-screening cohort. Table 4 compares the responses in statements between the pre-screening and post-screening groups.