The Russian Health Ministry's guidelines for providing medical care to pregnant women and women in labor who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 showed on Thursday that all newborn babies should be tested for coronavirus at birth
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th May, 2020) The Russian Health Ministry's guidelines for providing medical care to pregnant women and women in labor who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 showed on Thursday that all newborn babies should be tested for coronavirus at birth.
"All newborns must be tested for SARS-CoV-2 at birth," the methodological recommendations said.
In February, a study by Chinese scientists published in The Lancet journal said that, according to preliminary research, COVID-19 could not be transmitted from an infected mother to her unborn baby. Scientists studied the cases of nine pregnant women infected with the coronavirus, all of whom gave birth to healthy children who had no traces of the virus. Moreover, in March, a case study conducted by scientists from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China's Wuhan showed that COVID-19 could not be transmitted from pregnant mothers to newly born babies.
However, deaths of infants with COVID-19 have already been reported by several countries, including the United States, South Africa, Russia and Brazil.
Over the past day, Russia has registered 8,371 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total count to 379,051 in the country. According to the COVID-19 response center, 6.5 percent of new patients are children, while the majority are aged between 18 and 45. The country's COVID-19 death toll has increased by 174 to 4,142.
