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STILL IN THE GAME: CU Medicine vs COVID-19 29 Professor Poon and her team handled the first instance of COVID-19 pregnancy, an imported case of a Pakistani mother returning to Hong Kong who was separated from her husband and young children, and with limited English. ‘It was quite a challenging situation for this mother,’ Professor Poon notes. The mother was guided through to a normal birth. Professor Poon and her team oversaw the infection protocols necessary and shared that across all Hong Kong hospitals. Pregnancy itself is a risk factor for viral respiratory infection and developing severe pneumonia due to physiologic changes in the immune and cardiopulmonary systems. There have been no confirmed cases of ‘vertical’ mother-child trans- mission of the virus in Hong Kong. Professor Poon has screened and managed all three pregnant mothers with the disease treated at Prince of Wales Hospital. She saw their pregnancies through to their conclusion. It is a point of pride that with a negative-pres- sure room and staff in full protective gear, the mothers had vaginal deliveries. ‘They all had natural births. I think that was quite nice. To pregnant women, COVID-19 means fear. The key was to normalize their pregnancy,’ Professor Poon says. She also followed up the recovered COVID-19 pregnant cases to ensure their babies were fine during the pregnancy. Professor Poon’s colleagues also contributed to the fight against COVID-19. Prof. Leung Tak-yeung , chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, took it upon himself to embark on the sole care of eight pregnant women who returned to Hong Kong from Wuhan. With the group interned in a quarantine camp near CUHK, Professor Leung decided he alone would carry out the first antenatal check-up for the women, to minimize the risk of exposure for his department. Fortunately, all eight pregnant women proved negative for the virus in the end. Professor Poon considers the act of her chairman very magnanimous in the fight against COVID-19.