Pregnant women are unlikely to transmit COVID to their babies.

Pregnant women who test positive for COVID-19 when they give birth rarely pass the virus on to their newborns, according to new research. The reason: COVID is not often found in the bloodstream of patients.

As researchers race to understand the effects of COVID on pregnancy and babies, these findings offer good news for parents-to-be.

“Analyzes show infection among babies born to women with COVID-19 was rare“, He said Kate Woodworthmedical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCfor its acronym in English).

Still, a pregnant woman with covid you are at risk of serious illness, which can also have negative health consequences for your newborn child, even if the baby is born without COVID. Recent studies have linked COVID-19 during pregnancy to both preterm birth and stillbirth.

The CDC published a study in September that found the rate of mother-to-baby transmission to be less than 4%. Another study published last February that looked at data from more than 4,000 women in the neonatal registries of COVID-19 from the United States and the United Kingdom, estimates it to be even lower, at around just 2%.

Research indicates that this probably has to do with the absence of the virus in the bloodstream of the mother-to-be. SARS-CoV-2 is not usually present in blood samples, indicating that it does not usually enter the bloodstream of an infected person.

In one peer-reviewed study, for example, only 6% of patients who came to the ER with COVID-19 had the virus in their blood. Other recent data suggests that viral presence in the blood may be linked to more severe disease.

In the small number of newborns who test positive at birth, the CDC studies said, they have found that most infections are mild or asymptomatic. World Health Organization (who) has reported similar findings.

So far, it seems that the COVID-19 it behaves much more like the flu during pregnancy, said Denise Jamieson, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, Georgia.

The flu is another virus that is rarely transmitted to the fetus. With the flu, problems with pregnancy are more related to the illness of pregnant women than to the transmission of the virus to the fetus.

A Weill Cornell Medicine study that analyzed umbilical cord blood samples from more than 100 pregnant women during 2021 found that those who were vaccinated during pregnancy began to produce antibodies a few days after their first dose. Just over two weeks later, they began to transfer what is known as “passive immunity” to their babies.

This means that even if a baby is unlikely to catch COVID-19 in the womb, it would have protection against the virus even after it came into the world.