**1. Introduction**

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020 [1]. The infection rate caused by the virus increased exponentially in 2020 until March 13, 2021, registering 119,165,535 confirmed cases and 2,641,567 deaths [2].

Pregnant and puerperal women have been considered groups at risk of morbidity and mortality since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic because of the physiological and immunological changes that can increase the risk of complications in respiratory infections and the knowledge of unfavorable outcomes in pregnant women and their newborns in infections caused by other coronaviruses, SARS, Middle East respiratory syndrome, and influenza [3–6].

Some adverse outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection observed during pregnancy include admission to the intensive care unit (ICU) or death. However, the clinical evolution of COVID-19 in most women is not serious, resembling the general population [7, 8].

Initially, there was no evidence of vertical transmission due to COVID-19 during pregnancy [3, 5, 6]. During the pandemic, several studies concluded that there was this possibility [9, 10], with one confirmed case of vertical transmission occurrence [11]. However, all of them suggested that further studies should be conducted on the subject, as it is a recent disease and the number of participants in the published studies is small.

There is strong evidence that other viral infections cause neurological and behavioral changes in the fetus, such as the influenza virus related to schizophrenia [12]. Other viral infections, such as the Zika virus (ZIKV), can cause malformations, including microcephaly [13].

Therefore, outpatient monitoring of children exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus during pregnancy is vital to understand the impacts of the disease on the growth and development of these children.

A narrative review was carried out using the keywords: COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, vertical transmission, perinatal infection and offspring. In addition to the search for other viral infections: influenza, herpes simplex, rubella, cytomegalovirus and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The authors searched the Pubmed, Medline, and Google Scholar databases, reviewed the available articles, and determined which articles were most relevant to the project.
