London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Jan van der Meulen, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and co-lead author on the paper, said:

“It’s important we interpret these findings with caution, as we only have information about COVID-19 infection at the time of birth. It is possible that our results can be partly explained by differences in infection rates during different periods of pregnancy: women towards the end of their pregnancy may have been less likely to catch the virus than women earlier in pregnancy, as advice to women and to their employers has focused on the risks of COVID in late pregnancy after 28 weeks gestation."