While pregnant women have been warned about their potential for more severe COVID-19 illness, a few early reports have suggested one positive finding for this population -- that pandemic lockdown restrictions may have coincided with a decrease in preterm births.
Early studies have observed a decline in preterm birth rates during the lockdowns, highlighting a potential "silver lining" of the pandemic. But while these findings are encouraging, experts say there is still not enough data to know whether the reduction in preterm births was widespread, or what factors may have caused this outcome to drop in the first place.
"The jury is out, in terms of what's the overall impact [of the pandemic] on preterm birth," said Rahul Gupta, MD, MPH, chief medical and health officer at March of Dimes. While early data may provide some insight into lifestyle changes such as working from home and remote access to healthcare, Gupta said more information is needed before drawing conclusions about preterm birth reductions -- and which populations were most affected.