New Delhi: In India’s first case of a COVID-19 positive patient giving birth, the wife of a senior resident doctor at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, delivered a healthy baby on April 3 evening.
The doctor, working in the Department of Physiology at the AIIMS, was the first to test positive of COVID-19 in the family.
The 29-year-old mother was nine months pregnant when she tested positive on April 2. Thereafter she has been kept in isolation at the institute, along with her three-year-old daughter, and the husband, besides her brother-in-law – also infected with the disease. With only a week short of completing her full term of pregnancy, the doctors decided to go ahead with a C-section.
According to news reports, “A team of 10 doctors was deputed to deal with the case.” She is also said to be the first pregnant woman to be COVID-19 positive in Delhi.
“Both the mother and the baby are healthy. The baby was delivered a week early, through C-section. At present, the infant has been kept with the mother since he will require breastfeeding. So far, there is no evidence that the infection can be transmitted through breastfeeding. While the mother has tested positive for COVID-19, she is a symptomatic. We will be collecting samples of the in fact too,” a senior doctor from AIIMS told the Indian Express.
Also read: How Safe Are India’s Children From COVID-19?
The news report said AIIMs has already prepared a 38-page document on the protocol to be followed in dealing with pregnant women who have tested positive for the virus.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines allow COVID-19 positive women to breastfeed babies but with necessary precautions, such as wearing a mask, washing hands before and after touching the baby, etc.
However, an April 3 AFP news report from Spain, where more than 10,000 people have died from COVID-19, quoted a Madrid-based woman affected with the virus that she was not allowed to be near her newborn for ten days by the doctors for the fear of infecting it.
“And even though she has since been reunited with her son, neither she nor her husband have been allowed to physically touch him without gloves as they undergo an extended period of quarantine,” the report said.
“It’s hard,” the mother told the news agency.