Hero Docs Save Baby as Pregnant Woman Dies Of COVID

Story By: Alex Cope, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash

This physiotherapist who was diagnosed with coronavirus when she was 32 weeks pregnant has died from the disease but doctors managed to save her baby in an emergency cesarean.

Physiotherapist Viviane Albuquerque, 33, was taken to the Unimed Hospital in the city of Recife in the northeastern Brazilian state of Recife on 28th March with symptoms of COVID-19 in her 32nd week of pregnancy.

She was confirmed to have the virus on 1st April and taken directly to the intensive care unit because she was pregnant. Her condition worsened and on 3rd April she was intubated before an emergency caesarian was carried out on Saturday (4th April).

The baby was successfully delivered but mother Albuquerque could not recover and died a day later.

Her partner Erik Silva said their baby was in the intensive care unit in a serious but stable condition. Local newspaper Folha de Pernambuco report the baby weighed 2 kilogrammes (4.4 lbs) and had suffered a cardiac arrest.

Silva said: “She was a very hardworking person, she was going to be a law graduate in the middle of the year. She was an excellent person, we had been together for four years. Our son is called Erik and he is recovering. He was born after eight months.”

The hospital said in a statement that the baby is “receiving all the necessary from the medical team”.

Local media report this was Albuquerque’s second pregnancy, having previously given birth to twins, five years old, who are now in their father’s house in quarantine. The family do not know how she was infected with the virus.

According to the latest figures from the Johns Hopkins University, Brazil has registered 12,232 confirmed cases of coronavirus with 566 deaths and 127 recoveries.

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