Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and its impact on assisted reproductive technologies

Vyshnavi A. Rao; Kamini A. Rao

doi:10.25259/JRHM_47_2020

View/Download PDF

Review Article

2 (

Suppl_1

); 59-64

doi:

10.25259/JRHM_47_2020

Buy Reprints

PDF

Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and its impact on assisted reproductive technologies

Vyshnavi A. Rao^1,, Kamini A. Rao¹

1Department of Reproductive Medicine, Milann The Fertility Centre, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.

*Corresponding author: Vyshnavi A. Rao, Department of Reproductive Medicine, Milann The Fertility Centre, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. vyshnavirao@gmail.com

Received: 2020-11-30, Accepted: 2021-01-20, Published: 2021-02-22

Licence

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.

How to cite this article: Rao VA, Rao KA. Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and its impact on assisted reproductive technologies. J Reprod Healthc Med 2021;2(Suppl_1):S59-S64.

Abstract

Coronavirus diease-2019 (COVID-19), a global pandemic, has imposed a lot of challenges and potential risk to women who are planning a pregnancy and women who are pregnant in the COVID era. After the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19, a global pandemic, pregnancies achieved through medically assisted reproduction/Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) services experienced a major hit as couples became even more anxious to embark on pregnancy, the obvious reasons being the vertical transmission to the fetus, and use of critical health-care support system if required. Although the effects of coronavirus in terms of pregnancies conceived through the above measures are not known, retrospective studies will be needed to assess the outcomes of pregnancies conceived either naturally or any of the above mentioned procedures. As a precautionary measure, many professional societies worldwide recommended a ban on fertility treatments 1 week after WHO declared this as a pandemic. All reproductive medicine societies had published guidelines regarding stopping of infertility services except for poor responders and oocyte/sperm cryopreservation procedures in cancer patients – undergoing chemotherapy/radiation as there could be a reduction in gamete numbers. The possible reasons being to avoid complications of ART, like virus-induced complications of pregnancy and vertical transmission to fetus in severe respiratory distress syndrome COVID-positive mothers. The measures required to be taken are physical social distancing and critical health-care accessibility services. It has caused a major blow with respect to economic and social framework of our societies.