A stillborn baby was COVID-19 positive after being infected by his mother according to a post mortem carried out by French doctors.
The postmortem has confirmed that the dead baby was COVID-19 positive after the virus was transmitted from mother to child through the umbilical cord.
The Regional Health Agency of Occitanie, a southern French administrative region, confirmed that the newborn baby who was born to an unidentified mother was COVID-19 positive yesterday (22nd August).
Public Health France (ARS) did not say which hospital the incident occurred at, nor did they confirm if the death was directly linked to the COVID-19 infection.
However, if it is confirmed as being linked to the infection it will mean that the death which occurred last Friday (20th August) was the seventh child under the age of 10 to die with a COVID-19 infection in France since the start of the pandemic.
The ARS said in a statement: “In these tragic circumstances, the ARS teams wish to send their most sincere condolences to this bereaved family,”
There have been very few confirmed cases of babies becoming infected in the womb.
Daniele De Luca, a doctor who worked on a research paper titled ‘Transplacental transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infection’, said: “We have shown that the transmission from the mother to the foetus across the placenta is possible during the last weeks of pregnancy,”
He added that the pathway of transmission is through the umbilical cord from the placenta.
De Luca emphasised the although the infection can be very damaging to the unborn baby’s health it is: ” A very rare occurrence compared to the global population.”
According to the Centre For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): “Based on what is known at this time, pregnant and recently pregnant women are at an increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19 compared to nonpregnant women”.
Local news outlet France-3 reports that in total, 1,199 people are hospitalized in Occitanie, including 300 in intensive care and 651 in conventional hospitalisation.
According to John Hopkins University, as of today (23rd August), there have been 113,472 confirmed COVID-19 related deaths and 6,700,252 cases in France.
