Two obstetricians are spearheading the establishment of an Australian national registry for women who are pregnant and have COVID-19.

The aim is to track maternal and neonatal outcomes from diagnosis to one month after the birth, building a picture of the course of the disease and identifying modifiable risk factors.

Dr Clare Whitehead, from the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, and Dr Kirsten Palmer, of Monash Health, Melbourne, started work on the CHOPAN (Coronavirus Health Outcomes in Pregnancy and Newborns) registry a fortnight ago.

“The database has been set up and ethics approval obtained all in the past two weeks. There’s nothing like a pandemic to get things done quickly!” Dr Whitehead, a maternal and fetal medicine specialist, told Women’s Health Update.