LAUSR

COVID-19 pandemic This retrospective cohort study conducted at a tertiary cen-ter in Turkey demonstrated high neonatal morbidity and mortality during the pandemic in comparison to the pre-pandemic period. There was a rise in incidences of Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE) during the first wave of the pandemic. Similarly, we observed high incidence rate of HIE from a large retrospective observational study in a local neonatal unit in the UK within the pre-pandemic and pandemic periods (29 months). The pre-pandemic period included neonates born from January 2019 to March 2020 (15 months) andthepandemic period fromApril 2020 to May2021 (14 months). The incidence of preterm births, congenital anomalies, and HIE as well as their mortalities between these periods were compared.Here in,we recorded8825 live births within the study period. No differences were observed in live births ( p Z 0.99 ) and ethnicity ( p Z 0.66 ) between the two periods. However, we observed an increase in neonatal admissions (943 vs. 866, p < 0.01 ), an increase in birth rate with gestational ages within 27 e 32 weeks (1.3% vs. 0.5%, p < 0.01 ) and 32 e 37 weeks (5.4% vs. 3.2%, p < 0.01 ) during the pandemic period as compared to pre-pandemic period.