The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on people’s lives worldwide, causing stress and anxiety for many people, including pregnant women. In addition do not knowing the implications of the new disease, pregnant women may also be negatively impacted by public health actions, such as limitations for accompanying persons to participate in childbirth and overall social distancing. The main objective of the research is to compare childbirth among women who gave birth during the COVID-19 pandemic with a control group. The data was collected using a questionnaire for Assessing the Childbirth Experience. 537 women who gave birth in 2019 and 2020 were included in the research and divided into two groups based on whether they gave birth before or after the state of emergency was declared in Latvia on March 12, 2020. The data was analysed using the IBM SPSS statistics program. The results showed that the childbirth experience for women giving birth without an accompanying person was statistically inferior on several accounts (process control, level of fear, breastfeeding support, etc.) than for women who had an accompanying person participating. In the research group there were proportionally more such women than in the control group, showing that COVID-19 has negatively impacted childbirth experience for many women.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic by the WHO on March 11, 2020, due to its high infection rate, which caused thousands of deaths worldwide and expanding. The evolving outbreak of COVID-19 requires health-protective behavior that can alleviate the severity of an epidemic. Therefore, recognizing the underlying drivers of health-protective behavior against COVID-19 is urgently needed to form policy responses. The purpose of this study was to investigate the individual-level underlying drivers affecting the formation of knowledge, attitudes, and COVID-19-related health-protective behavior among individuals aged 50 and older who are more vulnerable to complications of infection because of their age. The factors making individuals more vulnerable are also associated with the ability to access and understand information, make well-informed decisions, and take health-protective and promoting actions, especially when information itself is not timely, trusted, consistent, or actionable. The researchers used data from a representative population sample consisting of 50-80-year-old individuals, obtained from in-depth, semi-structured telephone interviews during July – August 2020, between the first and second waves of COVID-19. For conducting qualitative data analyses, the Grounded Theory (GT) approach for developing code structure was used.

Ebstein anomaly is a rare congenital heart disease characterized by a varying degree of anatomical and functional abnormalities of tricuspid valve and right ventricle. It often coexists with other congenital cardiac malformations. Up to 79–89% of patients with Ebstein anomaly have interatrial communication in the form of patent oval foramen or atrial septal defect and more than one-third has other types of cardiac malformations. Association between Ebstein anomaly and right aortic arch is extremely rare and only few cases have been described in the literature so far. Much rarer than with other cardiac malformations, Ebstein anomaly is associated with non-cardiac malformations or genetic syndromes. Several cases of association between Ebstein anomaly and Charge syndrome have been reported, nevertheless, Ebstein anomaly accounts for less than 1% of cardiac defects seen in patients with Charge syndrome. In this case report, we present a unique case of a patient with Charge syndrome where both Ebstein anomaly and right aortic arch are present. The diagnosis of Ebstein anomaly and right aortic arch was established prenatally. In the first years of life, the patient did not exhibit any remarkable symptoms. However, over time, deterioration of right ventricle function and increased tricuspid regurgitation were observed, requiring consideration of surgical treatment at the age of five. In addition, delay in physical, motor, and mental development was observed and thus, at the age of five, the patient was consulted by a medical geneticist and a gene panel to test for structural heart defects was ordered. The test showed a mutation in chromodomain helicase DNA binding protein 7 (CHD7) gene, which, along with clinical features, allowed to establish a diagnosis of Charge syndrome. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first case report of a patient with Charge syndrome, Ebstein anomaly, and right aortic arch that has been described in the literature.