Virus World

Infants born to people who had COVID while pregnant are at a higher risk of respiratory distress, but vaccination greatly lowers the risk. More than four years after the virus that causes COVID first appeared, scientists continue to discover new ways that the illness threatens pregnant people and babies—as well as additional evidence that vaccination offers significant protection. A new study finds that babies born to women who got COVID while they were pregnant were three times more likely to develop serious breathing problems than infants whose mothers didn’t have the disease during pregnancy, even if the infants weren’t infected themselves. Seventeen percent of the babies in the study who were exposed to COVID before birth developed respiratory distress, compared with only about 5 to 6 percent of newborns in the general population before the pandemic. The findings were published on Wednesday in Nature Communications....

 

Stucy cited (Jan. 24, 2023):

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-44549-5