A recent study conducted in France has found that nearly 30 per cent newborns who had Covid-19 contracted the infection either in the womb or from the mother during labour. The study reviewed 176 published cases of newborns with Covid-19.
It said while most newborns contract the disease after labour, but there is a rare possibility that an infected mother may pass on the disease to the child before birth.
Most of the cases that were reviewed in this study had only mild symptoms while three newborns died but their death, the study said, was due to “unrelated reasons”.
It’s rare but possible
In a report on this study, The Guardian said, “While Covid-19 is rare in newborns, doctors have been keen to understand the potential risks that babies face should tests reveal they have the infection soon after birth.”
The 176 cases of neonatal Covid-19 infections that were reviewed in this study involved cases where the infants had “tested positive at least once or were found to found to have antibodies against the virus”, The Guardian reported.
Quoting the study, which was published in Nature, the report said that most babies (nearly 70 per cent), got infected in the hospital and the source of the infection could be from the mother, medical staff, other patients, family members and visitors, as they all posed a potential infection risk.
“The rest of the infections (nearly 30 per cent) were passed on directly from the mother before or during birth,” the report said.
Even though this form of transmission among newborns is rare, it is important that doctors must be aware that it is possible for newborns to be born with the virus, Daniele De Luca, medical director of paediatrics and neonatal critical care at the Antoine Be´cle`re Hospital, Paris told The Guardian.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, some argued that this would never touch babies. It’s rare, but it does exist,” he told the newspaper.
50% infants were asymptomatic
Overall, of the 176 cases that were reviewed, the study found that half of them were asymptomatic. And among those who showed symptoms, 64 per cent had abnormal lung scans, 52 per cent had breathing problems, 44 per cent had a fever, and 36 per cent had difficulties with feeding, diarrhoea and vomiting, the report said.
Apart from this, the study observed that only 18 per cent of the newborns who fell ill “developed neurological symptoms ranging from irritability and lethargy to problems with muscle tone that made the limbs either floppy or too stiff”.
Any risk to breastfeeding?
This research gains significance as it enhances our current understanding of the virus, especially how it is transmitted among newborns.
However, the doctors have not found any extra risk from breastfeeding the newborns but said if the mother was “infectious”, the possibility of the child catching the virus in the first few days is nearly five times more than if the two were kept apart.
“We know that keeping the mother and baby together has a lot of advantages, but if the mother is symptomatic, it would be better for some days to be cautious,” De Luca told The Guardian. “If they cannot be separated, and in some cases it is impossible, the mother should try to be extra-careful while she is symptomatic, and if possible use PPE and hand gel to reduce the risk of transmission.”
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