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French doctors have reported the first case of an infection with Covid-19 in the womb – at least that is what they believe. Until now, there was doubt about whether babies could be infected during birth or before. The baby boy recovered well from the disease.
The medical case was described in the journal Nature Communications, as part of a study involving a number of babies with Covid-19 suspected of contracting the virus in the womb. Until now, there was no evidence that the babies had actually been infected in the womb, since it could just as well have happened during or just after delivery. However, there is no doubt about this baby boy, says pediatrician Daniele De Luca of the Parisian Antoine Béclère hospital in The Guardian.
Full recovery
The 23-year-old mother, then more than 7 months pregnant, was admitted to the hospital on March 24 with a fever and a severe cough. The test showed that she was indeed infected with Covid-19. Three days after the mother was hospitalized, studies showed that the baby was not doing well. It was decided to proceed with an emergency Caesarean section. The baby was immediately placed in a neonatal ward and intubated because of the general anesthetic under which the mother was placed.
Blood tests and fluid from the baby’s lungs revealed that the newborn was also infected with the Covid-19 virus. More tests found that the virus had spread from the mother’s blood to the placenta, where it had multiplied and caused inflammation. The baby subsequently contracted the virus via the placenta. The baby appeared healthy for the first few days, but after a few days appeared to have symptoms of gliosis, a side effect of a neurological injury. The good news, however, is that the baby made a full recovery from this.
Rare
“It is rare,” says De Luca, “but medical personnel should be aware that this can happen.” The reason why it has never before been shown with certainty that babies could contract the virus in the womb is because you need a lot of blood samples to prove it. “You need the blood of the mother, the blood of the newborn, the umbilical cord blood, the placenta and the amniotic fluid, and it is extremely difficult to get all these samples in a pandemic with emergencies everywhere.”
However, pregnant women need not fear too quickly. Andrew Shennan, a professor of obstetrics at King’s College London, says it’s rare for mothers to pass Covid-19 on to their babies. “In 244 live births of infected mothers in the UK, 95% had no sign of the virus and the results are comparable to uninfected babies,” he said in The Guardian. “Women can rest assured that pregnancy is not a significant risk factor for them or their babies with Covid-19.”
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