Covid-19 and Pregnant Health Care Providers Q&A

hello everyone my name is Steve now I am with Emory Communications and I'm joined by dr. Denise Jamison the James rubber McCourt professor and chair in the department gynecology and obstetrics at the Emory University School of Medicine dr. Jamison thank you so much for being here with us today happy to be here we've gathered many of the common questions we've heard from pregnant healthcare providers in order to ask them here we'll start with the first question is it safe to care for Koba 19 suspected or positive patients if you are pregnant there's limited evidence

about the severity of COBIT among pregnant women but so far from what we know there's no evidence that pregnant women are more severely affected by kovat therefore pregnant women can continue to work even in this time of kovat it makes sense if possible to limit exposure of pregnant women to patients with COBIT particularly aerosolizing procedures such as innovation excavation bronchoscopy if

feasible it makes sense to it may make sense to reassign pregnant healthcare workers to avoid those types of procedures when possible I'm pregnant but don't work in direct patient care is it safe for me to work in the hospital so for pregnant women who work in a hospital setting but aren't directly interacting with patients they should continue to do the same things we're recommending for everybody things like wash your hands frequently and avoid

touching your your face are there additional specific PPE guidelines for pregnant staff so pregnant staff should be observing the same PPE principles that we are recommending for all of our staff most nights have been conducted on this issue Cova 19 and pregnancy so we have limited information in terms of kovin in pregnancy we have some small case series coming from China that don't

show any increased risk of severe disease in pregnancy we're just starting to get the first reports of pregnant women in the United States and we'll need to see how pregnant women in the United States are doing compared to the experience in China so I think in the next few weeks it'll be really important to start to find out more about kovat in pregnancy so that we can better counsel and manage our pregnant patients what are the factors that would

change the CDC guidelines on pregnancy and carrying / interacting with koban 19 patients CDC's guidelines are evidence-based so they're continuously reviewing the literature and what's known about COBIT to try and make the best national guidance that they can based on emerging rapidly emerging information and we use CDC guidance in order to be able to make evidence-based recommendations for our patients here at

Emory are there any additional precautions I should take as a healthcare provider as a pregnant healthcare provider you should take the same precautions that we're recommending for any healthcare provider proper and consistent and correct use of personal protective equipment of boarding touching your face washing your hands and using hand sanitizer frequently so it's really important pregnant or not pregnant that as health care workers we

ensure that we are not getting infected with Kovan and we're not infecting our patients with kovetz dr. Jamison this has been very informational I really appreciate you taking the time today thanks very much for your interest in covent and pregnancy you