Newborn dies after coronavirus-positive Louisiana mom goes into premature labor

A worker sweeps inside a temporary hospital that has been set up in the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, as overflow for local hospitals that are reaching capacity, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in New Orleans, Saturday, April 4, 2020. A premature baby died in Baton Rouge on Monday after coronavirus-caused respiratory distress sent her mother into early labor.(Gerald Herbert/AP)

A newborn died after her mother went into labor prematurely during respiratory distress caused by coronavirus.

While test results were still pending on the infant, who lived only a few hours, the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner’s Office said the death would be attributable to COVID-19 either way.

“Essentially what we have is a mother, pregnant mother, who is 22 weeks gestation or near that, who had respiratory symptoms and was put on a ventilator,” East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner Beau Clark told the Daily News on Monday afternoon.

The woman had been brought in last week with signs of respiratory distress, including low oxygenation in her blood, known as hypoxia, and other signs of respiratory distress, Clark said. A coronavirus test came back positive.

The respiratory distress sparked preterm labor on Sunday. She delivered a live baby girl, “and the infant died a few hours or an hour after delivery,” Clark said.

“Because of the mother’s condition deteriorating to the point of the premature labor, we consider this a COVID-19 related death,” he told The News.

The baby girl was one of seven deaths announced Monday in that parish alone, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate. Overall, Louisiana had 15,000 confirmed cases Monday, 12% of those people hospitalized, the Associated Press reported. The statewide death toll is at least 512.

The infant’s coronavirus test will tell them whether the baby died of the disease, or of the other health issues inherent in a premature birth at 22 weeks – at which time a newborn has just a 6% chance of survival, Clark said.

“If the swabs are negative it will still be related because of the mother’s condition,” he said. “If positive, there’ll be some discussion of vertical transmission” – the question of whether a mother can transmit the virus to a baby in utero.

So far, he said, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has no solid evidence of vertical transmission, which is known to happen with HIV because of its particular properties, “and they don’t believe COVID-19 does that.”

A couple of studies done in China indicated such transmission might be possible, but the results were not conclusive.

Clark had no information on the current condition of the mother.

“This is the first case we know of like this in Louisiana,” he said. “Everybody can appreciate and understand the intimate relationship between an unborn child and its mother.”

If the baby had gotten coronavirus from her mother, it would be clear that vertical transmission is another danger of this new disease, and it would put pregnant women into a high-risk category for disease complications, Clark said.