A woman in her 36th week of pregnancy gave birth to a dead baby on Friday at Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba.
She went to the hospital after she stopped feeling fetal movements. Laboratory tests performed after the baby’s birth showed that he was infected with the new coronavirus.
The hospital said it suspected a connection between the baby’s death and the virus.
This is the second similar case in Israel and one of only a handful in the world of a fetus that contracts the virus in the womb.
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, too, caught the virus from his mother.
Prof. Arnon Wiznitzer, obstetrician and gynecologist at Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus in Petah Tikva, said The Jerusalem Post that fetuses that contract the virus through the placenta, called vertical transmission, is very unusual. So far, only between 1% and 3% of cases has the pregnant mother transmitted the virus directly to the baby. However, he said it is an argument for pregnant women to be vaccinated any quarter.
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On Saturday morning, the Ministry of Health reported that 39 pregnant women or puerperal women 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 sends it back full of oxygen.
There are 25 children under the age of 18 in the hospital, most of whom have underlying medical conditions before contracting COVID-19.
Five of them were newborns. Three children were in serious or critical condition.