With every passing day researchers around the world are learing something new about the novel coronavirus pandemic that remains the biggest threat to mankind.
A new development in Singapore now adds another lesson for the scientists to the understanding of this novel virus.
A Singaporean woman, who was infected with the novel coronavirus in March when she was pregnant, has given birth to a baby with Covid-19 antibodies.
This has offered a clue to the scientists of whether the Covid-19 infection can be transferred from mother to child. The infant was born this month with out COVID-19, but with the virus antibodies.
'My doctor suspects I have transferred my COVID-19 antibodies to him during my pregnancy,' mother of the baby Celine Ng-Chan told Straits Times newspaper.
The mother had been mildly ill from the disease and was discharged from hospital after two-and-a-half weeks.
Ng-Chan and the National University Hospital (NUH), where she gave birth, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The World Health Organisation says it is not yet known whether a pregnant woman with COVID-19 can pass the virus to her foetus or baby during pregnancy or delivery.
To date, the active virus has not been found in samples of fluid around the baby in the womb or in breast milk.
Doctors in China have reported the detection and decline over time of COVID-19 antibodies in babies born to women with the coronavirus disease, according to an article published in October in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Transmission of the new coronavirus from mothers to newborns is rare, doctors from New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center reported in October in JAMA Pediatrics.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in April this year said that the novel coronavirus can be transmitted from a pregnant mother to the newborn, but the ICMR had stressed that the proportion of pregnancies affected and the significance to the newborn have not been determined so far.
According to India's top medical research body, the transmission of COVID-19 can happen to a baby before the birth or during delivery from an infected pregnant mother. The ICMR, however, added that currently there is no scientific evidence to prove that breast milk has also tested positive for the deadly virus.
