COVID-19: For the second time in Israel, a stillborn baby has a crown

A woman in her 36th week of pregnancy gave birth to a dead baby on Friday at Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba.

She had gone to the hospital after she stopped feeling the movement of the fetus. Laboratory tests carried out after the baby was born showed that he was infected with the new coronavirus.

The hospital said it suspected there was a link between the baby’s death and the virus.

This is the second such case in Israel and one of the few in the world of a fetus contracting the virus in utero.

A similar case occurred earlier this month at Samson Assuta Ashdod University Hospital when a 25-week-pregnant woman gave birth to a stillborn baby. This child also caught the virus from his mother.

Professor Arnon Wiznitzer, obstetrician and gynecologist at Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus in Petah Tikva, said The Jerusalem Post that fetuses contracting the virus through the placenta, called vertical transmission, are very unusual. To date, in only 1% to 3% of cases, a pregnant mother has transmitted the virus directly to her baby. However, he said it was an argument for pregnant women to get vaccinated at any trimester.

On Saturday morning, the Ministry of Health showed that 39 pregnant women or new mothers were hospitalized, 10 of them in critical condition, eight of them intubated, including two connected to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine ( ECMO).

An ECMO machine is a heart-lung machine that removes carbon dioxide from a patient’s blood and returns their back filled with oxygen.

There are 25 children under the age of 18 in the hospital, most of them who had underlying medical conditions before contracting COVID-19.

Five of them were newborns. Three children were in serious or critical condition.