Doctors in France say they’ve come across the first case of an unborn baby contracting the coronavirus.
The case study was published in Nature Communications, a peer-reviewed, open-access scientific journal that’s been publishing since 2010. It was first reported by the Guardian.
The study followed several babies who tested positive with COVID-19. Doctors believe they possibly contracted the virus while still in the womb.
The infected baby was born to a 23-year-old mother, who was admitted to the hospital on March 24 after contracting the coronavirus in her third trimester.
After the mother’s admission, the baby showed signs of distress, prompting doctors to perform an emergency cesarean section.
The baby was isolated shortly after its birth, and tests revealed it tested positive for the coronavirus based on blood and fluid extracted from the lungs.
Other tests found the virus spread from the mother’s blood into the placenta, where it spread to the baby, who has since made a recovery.
“The combination of these data and our findings confirms that transplacental transmission is indeed possible in the last weeks of pregnancy, although we cannot exclude a possible transmission and fetal consequences earlier during the pregnancy, as there are no definite literature data available yet,” the study reads.
Coronavirus contractions have been less common in children, with only about 5% of confirmed coronavirus cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Breaking it down, about 1.7% of cases are in the 0-9 age group, and 3.8% of cases are in the 10-19 age group.
