Baby diagnosed with coronavirus 30 hours after birth, becomes youngest person to contract disease

A baby has been diagnosed with novel coronavirus in China's Wuhan city merely 30 hours after being born.

According to media reports, the newborn is the youngest person to be diagnosed with the disease. The mother of the baby was diagnosed with coronavirus before she gave birth to the child.

According to a Reuters report, based on this diagnosis, doctors at the Wuhan Children Hospital said pregnant women infected with coronavirus may be able to pass it to their unborn children.

“This reminds us to pay attention to mother-to-child being a possible route of coronavirus transmission,” Reuters quoted chief physician of Wuhan Children Hospital’s neonatal medicine department, Zeng Lingkong as saying.

According to doctors, the infant is stable and has no fever or cough, but was experiencing shortness of breath.

According to media reports, the infected newborn may be a case of 'vertical transmission'—infections passed on from mother to the child during pregnancy.

The hospital also revealed another case of a baby who was born healthy on January 13. However, the child's nanny was diagnosed with the virus later and after a few days, the infant's mother too was diagnosed with the disease. The child too started showing symptoms of the disease on January 29.

“Whether it was the baby’s nanny who passed the virus to the mother who passed it to the baby, we cannot be sure at the moment. But we can confirm that the baby was in close contact with patients infected with the new coronavirus, which says newborns can also be infected,” Reuters quoted Lingkong as saying.

Meanwhile, the death toll in China because of the virus has gone up to 490 while the number of confirmed cases has touched 24,300. The WHO has declared a global health emergency after coronavirus cases were reported in several parts of the globe.

(With PTI inputs)