In this issue of BJOG, Mendoza and colleagues report in an observational study the occurrence of a preeclampsia‐like syndrome in six out of eight pregnant patients with novel coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) who were admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) with severe pneumonia (Mendoza M, et al. BJOG 2020). There were no symptoms of preeclampsia amongst the 34 pregnant women who had mild forms of COVID‐19.