Neonatal Hearing Screening and Prevalence of Hearing Impairment in the Time Period of COVID-19 Epidemic in the North of Iran

COVID-19 is an acute respiratory disease, caused by a coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2. Previous reports suggest an association between COVID-19 infection and Hearing Loss (HL). We have investigated the Universal Newborn Hearing Screening (UNHS) results in the time period of COVID-19 epidemic in Guilan Province, north of Iran.

We analyzed UNHS results from10 major obstetrics hospitals from 20th Mar 2020 to 19th Mar 2021, and compared the total UNHS positive/“refer” and total neonatal HL reports with the same time periods of recent three years. The prevalence of risk factors for HL were analyzed during the same period.

The total number of childbirth was decreased significantly from 27735 birth cases in Mar 2017-2018 to 18216 births in Mar 2020-2021 (p<0.001), but the total “refer” rate was significantly increased from 63.0 per 1,000 births in Mar 2019-2020 to 79.8 in Mar 2020-2021 (OR=1.29, 95% CI: 1.19-1.39, p<0.001), and also increased from 74.7 per 1,000 births in Mar 2017-2020 to 79.8 in Mar 2020-2021 (OR=1.07, 95% CI: 1.01-1.14, p=0.020). The HL rate increased from 10.3 per 10,000 births in Mar 2019-2020 and from 11.4 per 10,000 births in Mar 2017-2020 to 18.7 in Mar 2020-2021 (OR=1.81 and 1.63, 95% CI: 1.06-3.09 and 1.10-2.44, p=0.028 and 0.015, respectively). The prevalence of preterm birth (p=0.039) and neonatal intensive care unit stay (p=0.016) was increased significantly during Mar 2020-2021.

The chance of “refer” results and neonatal HL, found in the UNHS program, increased during the COVID-19 epidemic in comparison to the past years.