Introduction
A crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic since last December, is a major
public health event that leads to significant uncertainty. It is caused
by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2),
which is a distinct clade from the beta coronaviruses associated with
human severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East
respiratory syndrome
(MERS)1. It has infected
more than 6.5 million people,
claiming
over 383 thousands lives in 207 countries and 5 continents as of Jun
2020. The number of COVID-19 infected pregnant women is also increasing.
There is legitimate concern, however, that pregnant women might have a
different disease course and outcomes, due to the physiological changes
in respiratory and immunological systems.
At present, scarce data has compared the difference of the clinical
characteristics of pregnant with non-pregnant patients with COVID-19
based on the data from systematic comparisons between infected pregnant
and non-pregnant women. This retrospective, single-center and
case-control study systematically compared the clinical course and
outcomes of pregnant patients with control cases confirmed to have
SARS-CoV-2 infection, and also offered some details of drug therapies of
pregnant patients from the view of clinical practice. We hope our study
findings will provide some novel and valuable information for clinicians
under the COVID-19 pandemic and possibly improve the clinical outcomes
of infected pregnant women.