In April, the Spanish Society of Neonatology (seNeo) launched a registry to find out which babies are infected with Covid-19 in their first month of life. Well, according to statistics, from April to July there were forty.
The good news is that most of them had no symptoms and only three developed a problem.
The importance of a registry of infected pregnant women and babies
At the beginning of March, the seNeo, consulted by the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies (CCAES), drew up a series of recommendations on the management of babies born during the pandemic, following the protocols put in place in China, that eliminated the mother’s contact with the baby: neither skin to skin nor breastfeeding.
At the beginning of the pandemic, all countries looked at China, because until that moment there was nothing written about COVID-19 and newborns. Hence those first recommendations of the seNE, according to Belén Fernández Colomer, coordinator of the National Registry of COVID-19 in newborns and their mothers.
But these indications did not convince the Italian neonatologists, who were a little ahead in the evolution of the cases, and also warned their Spanish colleagues that the COVID that there were going to be quite a few cases of infected pregnant women. This was explained by the coordinator to the EFE agency.
Hence, just two days later, the seNeo rectified its recommendations and again included skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding , as protocols for newborn care also in times of Covid-19.
The neonatologist at the Central Hospital of Asturias (HUCA) continues to explain that they needed to contrast with data if these indications were correct, because only China had data. For this reason, on April 3, the medical society launched a national registry that would monitor babies born to mothers infected during pregnancy and those newborns who in their first month of life were infected without their mothers having it. state during gestation.
“We wanted to see the two aspects: the possibility of what they call vertical transmission from mother to child and also that of a newborn who, like any other person, can be infected by contact, droplets, and so on.”
Very positive data in newborns
According to the coordinator, so far 90 percent of all hospitals (82) that have had cases have reported them to the registry. So it can be said that the following figures are real:
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670 newborns of mothers with coronavirus (50% of them asymptomatic) who have arrived in the world healthy have been reported.
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40 babies caught the virus in their first month of life, without their mother having it during pregnancy.
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Most newborns have not had any symptoms. Only three had any problems: two of them were premature twins and the other was a baby who was born with heart disease.
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Of those 40 babies, 26 were infected by a relative at home: the mother, in 16 of the cases.
“To date, we do not have clearly documented any case of a child infected during pregnancy by coronavirus. We have had some doubtful, but in any case, all asymptomatic of the 670 pregnancies ”.
This is what the neonatologist points out, adding: “We had 19 in April, and 21 in May, in June and July there were none, let’s see what happens now, with the increase in cases.”
So, for the moment, the seNEO thinks that its recommendations not to separate the mother and the baby after delivery and to bet on breastfeeding, are the right ones.
But the expert is also cautious and adds that the mothers included in the registry are cases that have been infected in the third trimester. Neonatologists know that viral infections are most dangerous early in the delivery, when the baby’s organs are forming.
Therefore, the intention is to continue collecting data, at least until next December. Explains the coordinator of the registry that there are a few pregnant women infected in the second trimester, in a delicate period of pregnancy, so they will monitor how the babies will evolve.
Via | El Confidencial, EFE
Photos | iStock
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