A pregnant mother who tested positive for COVID-19 transmitted the virus causing the disease to her prematurely born baby, UT Southwestern physicians report.
A pregnant mother who tested positive for COVID-19 transmitted the virus causing the disease to her prematurely born baby, UT Southwestern physicians report. Both were treated and recovered.
The case, detailed in an article published last month in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, adds to a growing body of evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can be transmitted in utero. It also underscores the importance of limiting COVID-19 exposure for pregnant women.
“Especially with the rising prevalence of the virus here in Texas, it’s very important to bring to the forefront this finding that mothers and infants can be affected by COVID-19, transmission can occur during pregnancy, and pregnant mothers need to protect themselves,” says Amanda Evans, M.D., an assistant professor of pediatrics specializing in infectious diseases at UT Southwestern and senior author of the paper. “We don’t know whether there are any long-term effects of COVID-19 infection in babies.”
Although more than 20 million people around the world have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – data on how the virus affects pregnant women have been limited. An early study out of Wuhan, China, concluded that SARS-CoV-2 transmission from mother to baby was unlikely, since the researchers found no copies of the virus in any amniotic fluid, umbilical cord blood, or breast milk. But a handful of more recent studies have suggested there may be isolated instances in which such viral transmission does occur during pregnancy.
Read more at UT Southwestern Medical Center
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