*: Adjusted for maternal age, marital status, parity, residential city, delivery type and infant sex. PTB: preterm birth; MPTB: moderate preterm birth; VPTB: very preterm birth N/A: There is no VPTB case in the subgroup.
a: Pregnant women who have experienced the COVID-19 lockdown (from 1/23/2020 to 2/24/2020) during any period of their pregnancy were defined as the exposed group. We further divided the exposed group into subgroups. according to their gestational weeks (GW) on 1/23/2020, the beginning of lockdown. In calculating the cumulative exposure dose to lockdown, we assigned a weighting of 3 to days with Level I response, 2 to days with Level II response, 1 to days with Level III response, and 0 to other days.
b: The exposed group refers to the pregnant women who have experienced the COVID-19 lockdown in their first 22 GWs. The rest of included participants were defined as the unexposed group. The individual cumulative exposure dose was calculated by combining the weightings with the overlap between their pregnancy period ≤22 GWs and the three levels of responses. Q1-Q4 were defined as the cumulative exposure dose of the exposed group classified by quartiles, and the unexposed group were used as reference. -: Not applicable
Table 4. Modification effects of infant sex on the associations of COVID-19 lockdown exposure with gestational length and PTB risk