Contraception and reproductive planning during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Introduction

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a global health emergency. Major disruption to healthcare services during the current COVID-19 pandemic will last even after its peak. Sexual and reproductive health (SRH), specially contraception, needs to be understood as an essential service.

Areas covered

This paper is a narrative review. Data from PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, and websites of scientific societies were screened during the months of April and May 2020. It addresses the main aspects related to contraception during the COVID-19 pandemic, with special emphasis on family planning services, extended use of long-acting reversible contraceptive (LARC) methods, drug interactions, and thromboembolism risk. We also specified some issues focused on the Brazilian reality.

Expert opinion

Ensuring proper contraception use in the COVID-19 time is very important. We encourage women, healthcare providers, policymakers, and the society to consider SRH services as priority.

KEYWORDS:

• Contraception
• coronavirus
• COVID-19
• SARS-CoV-2
• reproductive health
• family planning

Article highlights

• Contraception saves lives and sexual and reproductive health services must be seem as essential.

• Women who are well adapted can maintain the methods in use, respecting the medical eligibility criteria for contraceptive use.

• Since the risk of pregnancy while using a LARC method for more 1–2 years is extremely low, extended use beyond the labeled duration can be counseled.

• There are no concerns about pharmacological interactions between available hormonal contraceptive methods and potential COVID-19 therapies.

• It is not necessary to counsel users of combined hormonal contraception to switch to progestin-only methods.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Declaration of interest

E.S. Ferreira-Filho is a speaker for Bayer Healthcare. L. Bahamondes was a consultant for Bayer Healthcare, Merck Sharp and Dohme (MSD) and Vifor Pharma. All other authors have no other conflicts of interest to declare. There were no financial, commercial, or other relationships of a declarable nature relevant to this manuscript. None of the authors received any grants, fellowships, commercial assistance, or financial sponsorship to write this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This paper has not been funded.