First, we’d like to wish you a healthy and happy Christmas this 2020. Despite the current situation, we hope you will still enjoy it!
Secondly, we thought you’d like to know that Unica clinics are fully open throughout the entire Christmas period - so if receiving a positive pregnancy is high on your Christmas list, we’re here to help!
And now, for some great news!
There's at least one positive effect from COVID-19. Our change in lifestyle during the pandemic is helping our chances to conceive!
Experts from the International Fertility Alliance (IFA) announced on October 22nd that pregnancy success rates in some patient groups undergoing IVF treatments seem to be increasing by more than 10% since the beginning of the pandemic. These results have been observed at the 2 UNICA clinics based in the Czech Republic treating patients from all corners of Europe. IFA therefore decided to realize a scientific study that will include and assess data from several IVF clinics across Europe and should confirm these early results and analyse the potential causes.
The Head Doctors of the UNICA IVF clinics Dr Frgala and Dr Cepelak are currently discussing these early findings and believe that if such results were to be statistically confirmed, it could be explained by the change of lifestyle within the population over the past months. Many people are working from home, limited their social life to minimum, and therefore focus more on their personal health, reinforcing their immunity, and when they undertake an IVF treatment, they focus on each phase of the treatment properly. “We are glad to see a positive trend in the success rates of IVF treatments, the pandemic seemed to have only negative impacts so far, so it is finally a beacon of hope! Psychology and overall wellbeing are key to solving Fertility issues. If the population has been using months of quarantine, home-office, limited travel and social life, to focus on their personal health, well-being and immunity and if we can prove its long-term positive impact on Fertility, it would be great news giving hope and motivation to many patients in the process.” says Michaela Silhava, director of the UNICA Prague clinic.
COVID-19 had disturbed the IVF treatments of many patients in March/April as clinics had to slow down their operations, but since then no studies demonstrated any adverse effect of COVID-19 on pregnancy or fertility measures and treatments started again and as it seems with high success. This new study could actually prove that preventive Covid measures and lifestyle changes actually had a positive effect. Other demonstrated health-related positive effects of preventive Covid measures were for instance related to the influenza epidemic in South-America this summer which had one of the lowest incidences since many years; as the use of face-masks and social distancing rules also helped to slow down the spread of the flu virus.
Happy holidays from Unica!
