Do not forget our pregnant women during the COVID-19 pandemic

In late December 2019, a cluster of atypical cases of severe pneumonia was reported in Wuhan, China. On January 7, the causative agent of pneumonia was identified, a new type of Coronavirus, called SARS-CoV2. Since then, the virus has spread all around the world, and as we write on 1st June, more than 350,000 deaths and more than 6 million people infected have been reported. It did not take long until pregnant women were infected and the need for the development of guidelines concerning the prevention and management of COVID-19 during pregnancy emerged (Boelig et al. 2020a).It is estimated that currently, more than 100 million women are pregnant worldwide, potentially exposing their babies to COVID-19. So far, studies have demonstrated that the risk for healthy pregnant women for morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 is similar to the non-pregnant population of the same age. Vertical transmission of the virus does not appear to be a great risk, although further studies are necessary to confirm this finding. Furthermore, disease on newborns does not seem to be more aggressive than in adults (Mullins et al. 2020).Concerns about the capacity of health systems to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic have generated unprecedented mobilization of health systems around the world. Public policies have been focused mainly on treating infected patients by SARS-CoV-2 and on restrictive measures to protect people from being infected. Unfortunately, due to the fast spread of this virus combined with its high morbidity and mortality, many countries are witnessing how their health-care systems become overwhelmed and on the verge of collapse. As a result of this global crisis, many governments are facing difficulties in organizing their already precarious health-care systems while trying to respond to COVID-19 Pandemic and keeping essential health-care services running (Organization 2020).In this scenario, elective and preventive care has been deferred or eliminated. In addition, many patients are not going to health-care providers or to hospitals, even when there is a need, due to the fear of getting infected by SARS-CoV-2. The clinical impact of this trend is not clear, but concerns arise especially for patients in need of treatment and follow-up. By limiting the provision of essential care, patients will experience a near miss situation, or even a lethal event, not related to COVID-19 (Rosenbaum 2020). The provision of prenatal care could be one of the conditions compromised by the above scenarios with the potential of resulting in adverse outcomes.