Small Study Shows Pregnant Women May Not Pass COVID-19 on to Their Unborn Babies

We’re all searching for a glimmer of hope during these uncertain times, and that glimmer might be found in a report that a new, small study shows that pregnant women may not pass COVID-19 on to their newborn babies, Romper reports.

Published on Monday, March 16, in the Frontiers in Pediatrics journal, the findings show that the virus may not be transmitted from mother to her unborn baby. Researchers from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China studied four pregnant women who tested positive for the virus. The women all went on to deliver full-term babies. 

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Three of the mothers allowed their newborns to be tested and the results all came back negative. None of the four babies showed no signs of symptoms like cough, fever, or diarrhea and the infants were all well at the time of hospital discharge. 

Small Study Shows Pregnant Women May Not Pass COVID-19 on to Babies

The authors of the study from Wuhan added, “All of the four babies are doing well and have been formula feeding since birth.” A similar study, published in The Lancet, looked at nine pregnant women who tested positive for COVID-19 late in their pregnancies.

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After studying samples of amniotic fluid, umbilical cord blood, breast milk, and throat swabs from the babies, researchers shared the promising news. “Findings from this small group of cases suggest that there is currently no evidence for intrauterine infection caused by vertical transmission in women who develop COVID-19 pneumonia in late pregnancy,” researchers shared. 

There is still much that researchers still don’t know, as these sample sizes are small and information is changing each day. Stay tuned for more, hopefully, positive updates.