For example last week, doctors at a hospital in Wuhan reported that
two infants tested positive for the novel coronavirus, one just 30 hours after birth. Naturally, this troubling headline spread across news organizations, given it raised questions of whether pregnant women can infect their unborn children in utero or whether the disease can be transmitted during birth or through breast milk.
But let’s pump the brakes. Mother-to-infant transmission wasn’t observed
with SARS nor
MERS despite numerous cases involving pregnant women. Plus, there are other ways a newborn could catch the coronavirus, Rasmussen says, such as by being born at hospital overrun with infected patients during a hectic emergency.
In fact,
a new study published Thursday in The Lancet offers preliminary evidence that the coronavirus cannot be passed from mother to child.
In the report, researchers observed nine women in Wuhan who had COVID-19 pneumonia. Some of the women had pregnancy complications, but all cases resulted in live births without evidence of transmitting the infection. While this study doesn’t completely rule out the possibility of transmission during pregnancy, it underscores the need to exercise caution in speculating about this disease.
“There needs to be a high standard of evidence before you can say that’s happening definitively—and certainly before you start making changes to how cases are managed clinically or in terms of public policy,” Rasmussen says.
Frieman agrees. He hopes this epidemic will prompt more funding for coronavirus research like the recent pledges from the
European Union and the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Last Thursday, China’s National Health Commission said
more than 1,700 health care workers are ill with the new virus, and the announcement came just a day after the
WHO wrapped a summit on the best protocols for hospital care and the development of therapeutics, like vaccines.
Frieman wants the support and interest to last even if this outbreak eventually fizzles out, unlike
what happened with SARS research.
“Right after the SARS outbreak, there was a big bunch of money and then it went away,” Frieman says. “Why don’t we have these answers? Nobody funded these things.”
yle.fi
www.is.fi
