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The Master of the National Maternity Hospital has said that a relaxation of the Covid-19 visitor restrictions in Dublin maternity hospitals could take place starting this week.
Professor Shane Higgins spoke on RTÉ’s Drivetime after Dublin Mayor Hazel Chu called for such restrictions to be revised.
Her intervention was prompted by a series of tweets over the weekend from Sarah Flynn, a friendly birthing instructor, who said that women are having difficult experiences during pregnancy, particularly when going to appointments alone.
Professor Higgins said the upcoming “rollback” of the restrictions is likely to allow partners to attend a 20-week anomaly scan, which he said will be discussed this week.
She said she “has no doubt that some women may have received bad news while they were alone” as she acknowledged how “difficult” visitor restrictions have been for pregnant women and their partners.
He explained that partners in Dublin hospitals can now enter daily after the baby is born and there are unrestricted visiting neonatal units.
Professor Higgins said the measures had to be “feasible and reasonable.”
He said: “We are in a building that is 126 years old. It is very difficult to practice social distancing.”
He said there is very little evidence to show that Covid-19 poses a risk to a baby in the womb.
“In a study of more than 600 patients, using the umbilical cord blood of babies, very few had evidence that the infection had passed from mother to baby.”
He said that “a significant number” of pregnant women in Ireland have had Covid-19, and “fortunately all have recovered.”
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