Newborns of moms with suspected COVID-19 infections should be tested, CDC says

Babies born to women with suspected or confirmed coronavirus cases should also be tested for the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The federal organization’s new guidelines were released Wednesday and say the testing should occur 24 hours after the baby’s birth. Testing should be repeated 24 hours later if the first results comeback negative, the CDC suggests.

Limited information from the CDC suggests infants are at higher risk for “severe illness from COVID-19” than older children.

If testing is not available, all babies born to mothers with confirmed or suspected cases of the coronavirus should be considered to also have the virus, according to the CDC.

There are more than 1.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States and 93,000 deaths as of May 21, according to Johns Hopkins University. It’s unclear how many infants in the country have contracted the virus, which has been much more prone to seriously affect older people.

A study published in the Journal of Pediatrics states children that had to be placed in the intensive care unit due to coronavirus had higher levels of inflammation and required more breathing support than those being treated in the general unit.

More than half of the children researchers studied did not have known contact with someone who tested positive for the disease, the journal states.

The majority of infants with confirmed cases had “asymptomatic or mild disease and recovered without complication,” according to the CDC.

Signs of the coronavirus in babies are similar to those in adults, according to the CDC. Symptoms may include fever, lethargy, cough, vomiting, diarrhea and breathing problems.

Babies are most likely to transmit the disease “through respiratory droplets during the postnatal period,” the CDC states.

This story was originally published May 21, 2020 at 12:13 PM with the headline "Newborns of moms with suspected COVID-19 infections should be tested, CDC says."