The new Coronavirus killed 35 people and infected 1,395 Britons as of now in UK. While on Sunday. March 15, authorities reported 14 new death cases, a newborn baby was tested positive for COVID-19 just minutes after the birth. Doctors were surprised to witness a case like this.
As per the reports, the mother of the child was tested positive for COVID-19 and was admitted in a hospital just a few days before the birth of the child. The baby was born at North Middlesex hospital in Enfield, in north London.
The baby born with Coronavirus
As per the reports, the newborn was being treated at the North Middlesex hospital but the mother of the child had been transferred to an infectious-diseases hospital. Dr William Schaffner, a professor of Preventive Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine said that they are not sure whether the baby was infected by COVID-19 while he was inside mother's womb or not. Dr Schaffner added that it is possible that the baby got the virus soon after birth.
It should be mentioned that there are some health conditions which a baby can develop inside the womb and even some infections can also pass from a mother to her baby through the placenta or bodily fluids during delivery. The first newborn baby who tested positive for the Novel Coronavirus did so within 36 hours of birth.
Newborn babies infected by COVID-19
The researchers have analyzed samples taken from nine women who got infected by SARS-CoV-2 during the 36 to 39 weeks of pregnancy. These women were admitted to a hospital in Wuhan, China, where the Novel Coronavirus emerged in December 2019. Doctors monitoring these patients performed C-section for the safe birth of these babies.
To find out when and how the virus could be transmitted, the team of scientists looked at the collected samples of amniotic fluid, umbilical cord blood, breast milk and the samples from the throat of newborn babies. But none of these samples tested positive for the Coronavirus, and mothers and babies survived, revealed a study which was published on February 12 in the journal Lancet.
It should be mentioned that as per the researchers in those cases, the virus didn't appear to transmit from mothers to their unborn babies.
Here it is important to know that as per the early studies, children infected with COVID-19 are mostly showing mild symptoms but whether babies will fall under same category of vulnerability as adults is not backed by data so far. In this case, Schaffner told Live Science, "Newborns are particularly vulnerable, and they may be exceptions to that general rule since they are so vulnerable."
