COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by a coronavirus which was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 (Nishiura, 2020). From that moment up to March 11th, 2020, when the pandemic was declared, 118,000 cases of infection were reported in 114 countries (WHO). Taking into account previous reports of outbreaks of MERS and SARS infections -which belong to the same family-, pregnant women who tested positive to the virus did not display more severe disease symptoms than non-pregnant individuals. Currently, this group of viruses has not been associated with a measurable teratogenic effect. And, according to preliminary reports from China, pregnant women with COVID-19 do not seem to have more severe symptoms than non-pregnant ones, and it is yet to be known whether the virus exerts teratogenic effects (Sonja et al., 2020). In some cases, amniotic fluids, cord blood, or neonatal throat swab were examined and the virus could not be detected (Chen H. et al., 2020). As a proposal, a record of births in which mothers had tested positive to COVID-19 during pregnancy in Latin America should be made, with the purpose of identifying if there is an increasing rate of adverse events that may be related to coronavirus, which could subsequently lead to specific studies. The main objective of the project is to keep a record of the long-term effects, including congenital defects, that could be linked to the infection caused by this virus.
Keywords: follow-up, genetics, congenital
Start date: 2020-11-20
