Universal Screening for SARS-CoV-2 in Asymptomatic Pregnant Women: A Multi-center Experience

BACKGROUND: Novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is responsible for the current global pandemic and understandably, Obstetrics is not spared. Private maternity hospitals have a unique challenge of reassuring unaffected patients of uneventful delivery with the lowest possible rate of coronavirus infection while consequently offering compassionate and state of art services to women who turn out to be positive for SARS-CoV-2. This has led to a routine SARS-CoV-2 testing of all patients before admission in many of the private hospitals in India. The current study was undertaken to determine the incidence of SARS-COV-2 among asymptomatic pregnant women and to ascertain the utility of universal screening in these women. METHODOLOGY: A retrospective observational multi-center study was conducted over a period of approximately 5 months (1-May-2020 to 10-September-2020) in a chain of privately run maternity hospitals with presence in multiple cities across India. All asymptomatic pregnant women were tested for SARS-CoV-2 prior to elective/emergency hospital admission. RESULTS: Among 4158 women tested, 54 (1.3%) were positive for SARS-CoV-2 and intra partum and postnatal period was uneventful for all of them. CONCLUSION: Universal screening should be continued as preferred approach to ensure low anxiety levels of delivering women and safety of frontline workers. Further, universal screening helps avoid emergence of maternity centers as virus clusters by effective isolation of identified positive cases and minimizing points of contact.