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Since the start of the pandemic, the question of whether newborns can become infected with the coronavirus in utero has remained open. The rare case of newborns testing positive for the virus has come up here and there, but none have presented evidence that could rule out the possibility that the disease was transmitted once the baby was born. A new case adds another wrinkle to these studies, presenting strong evidence that the coronavirus can be transmitted directly from a pregnant woman to a fetus.
New york Times reports that new research published in the Nature’s Communications On Tuesday, the newspaper suggests that a COVID-19 positive baby born in a Paris hospital in March contracted the virus through his mother’s placenta, which also carried the virus. According to Dr. Daniele De Luca, chief of the pediatric and neonatal critical care division at Paris-Saclay University hospitals and principal investigator of the team reporting the case, the baby exhibited the symptom of brain inflammation but was able to recover without treatment. . Now, more than three months later, the baby is “vastly improved, almost clinically normal,” De Luca said, and the 23-year-old mother is also healthy.
The researchers analyzed the baby’s blood, the placenta, amniotic fluid cord blood, and the mother’s blood in the course of their study. De Luca said tests indicate that “the virus reaches the placenta and replicates there,” so it can infect the fetus itself, leading to “symptoms similar to those of adult patients with COVID-19.”
Dr. Yoel Sadovsky, who works at the University of Pittsburgh as director of the Magee-Womens Research Institute and is not affiliated with the study, told the Times Although he considers this latest research to be “quite convincing,” transmission of the coronavirus in utero still appears to be extremely rare, unlike other viruses such as Zika and rubella. De Luca said his team will continue to study other suspected cases of placental transmission.