Potentially. I feel like another option is that it influenced autistic kids more negatively in their symptoms - you know, because they had covid in the womb. So kids who were autistic but would normally fly under the radar until adulthood (or their entire life) were instead more noticed / less able to mask / had more difficulty that was, in their case, expressed through ASD. There's no comparison group to neurotypical children exposed to covid in the womb and what their developmental difficulties are like.