Perinatal Vertical Transmission of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19); A Remarkable Challenge for Healthcare Systems

Transmission of viral infections from mother to fetus is an important issue as it can affect both the maternal and neonatal pregnancy outcomes. The world is currently struggling with COVID-19 which has affected all countries regardless of their economic status. There exist similarities between the genetics of COVID-19 and other members of Coronavirus family, including SARS and MERS (1); therefore, it has been supposed that similar to SARS and MERS (2), COVID-19 has no vertical transmission (3). However, two systematic review studies provided some evidence which pointed to the contrary (4, 5). In a meta-analysis conducted by Kotlyar and colleagues the risk of vertical transmission from the infected mother to her baby was reported to be about 3.2% (5). This report is very important to healthcare systems as certain protocols have to be considered in screening babies born of infected mothers. Furthermore, there are still many questionable issues surrounding the behavior of agile COVID-19.