Giving Birth By Caesarean Section in Women Infected With Covid-19 and The Incidence of Covid-19 in Newborn. A Systematic Review

Labor method by caesarean section in Covid-19 infected pregnant women had higher ratio than vaginal delivery. The use of Caesarean section is adjusted to the condition of the mother or/and the baby. However, the literature on labor method and its relation to Covid-19 infection in newborn is rare. We conducted a review about association between giving birth by caesarean section in women infected with Covid-19 and the incidence of Covid-19 in the newborn. This research was an analytic systematic review and guided by PICO. Studies from NCBI and ScienceDirect were used to locate full text articles, written in English, published from 2019-2021. The search strategy included terms for (Cesarean Section or Delivery, Obstetric) and (Covid-19 or Sars-Cov-2) and infant, newborn and infectious disease vertical transmission. Articles were included when met the inclusion and exclusion criteria, then analysed with RevMan 5.4. The search yielded 205 records. After full text screening, 3 studies were found to meet all criteria and 3 studies were obtained from manual search. Six studies using cohort designs were based in the United States, China, Morocco, Spain, and Turkey. Sample sizes ranged from 15 to 125 participants. Overall effect z=0.81 (p value=0.42) showed that the caesarean section had no significant protective factor from Covid-19 infection in newborn. Our finding indicated that babies who were born from mothers with Covid-19 infection. However, there was possible publication bias and samples collected were minimum. More studies are needed to advance this emerging literature.