A small study from the US has found that infants born to mothers who caught Covid-19 during pregnancy have a higher chance of suffering respiratory distress.
It also found that risks would be significantly reduced if a mother was vaccinated.
One mother, Georgia McClung, caught the virus at 13 weeks of pregnancy, and her daughter Isla has since had RSV, colds, and chills.
McClung, who is vaccinated, said Isla was born "with quite a lot of mucus in her nose and lungs".
"I can’t say she’s been healthy, but then she is just getting the general colds you would expect," she said.
Report author Professor Karin Nielsen said that, in the researcher's study, the average time babies were admitted to hospital was 24 days.
“Some of the babies were on ventilators and all of them had to be admitted to neonatal intensive care unit when this happened.”
No babies actually had Covid-19 and those with mothers who had been vaccinated were more likely to be better off, she said.
“In the babies we looked at, there was less inflammation if the mothers had received a vaccine, so it is definitely protective.”
Several hundred babies involved in the study will now be monitored further to see if respiratory issues linger into later life.
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