A Fetus and its Mother Lose the Battle with Coronavirus

Late on Saturday, a 32-year old mother and her fetus lost their lives to the novel coronavirus. They were at the Hadassah-University Medical Center, where they were receiving treatment. The hospital made this grave announcement on the morning of Sunday. 

Last Tuesday, the woman was not feeling well and therefore, came to the hospital. Upon her arrival, she started to experience respiratory distress. Her condition deteriorated quickly and drastically until she suffered from a multisystem organ failure. 

Seeing her condition worsen, a multidisciplinary medical team started to make attempts to treat her. The hospital also stated that prolonged resuscitation efforts were also performed. An emergency C-section was performed to deliver the fetus and save its life, which was only 30 weeks old. 

However, despite the heroic efforts of the staff, the mother and the fetus ultimately lost their lives. The mother had also been hooked up to an ECMO, but to no avail. Hadassah revealed that its staff took the loss personally and is feeling very emotional at the moment. The statement read that the entire team of workers at the hospital shares the grief of the family of the deceased. 

Just last week, a 25-week-old fetus lost his life at the Samson Assuta Ashdod University Hospital. This happened soon after the fetus contracted the disease from his mother. Research was carried out to find out how the transmission of the virus is possible from a mother to her fetus. 

The answer revealed that a vertical transmission is the cause of fetuses contracting the infection. This means that it was passed from the mother to the baby through the placenta. This was the first fetus to have lost its life like this in the State of Israel. 

According to Prof. Arnon Wiznitzer, a gynecologist and obstetrician at Rabin Medical Center’s Beilinson Campus, located in Petah Tikva, up until today, only 1% to 3% of the cases all over the world has a pregnant mother directly transmitting the virus to her fetus. 

Since last month, the government of the country has also opened up vaccination appointments for women who are expecting. This allowance was made soon after it became evident that the third wave of the coronavirus was especially affecting the younger generation of the country. Numerous pregnant women have so far been hospitalized over the time span of the past couple of months. Several babies have had to be delivered preterm due to the fact that their mothers were struggling to survive in intensive care units. 

In the past two waves, pregnant women were not placed at a high risk for serious cases of the disease. However, health experts have since informed that young people are contracting the virus more and more, which can be because of the British mutation. After checking the genetic sequencing of a couple of pregnant women in the country, it was found that they were infected with this particular variant. 

Earlier this month, the Haemek Medical Center also reported having three pregnant women, who were in serious condition. This led to a public announcement being made to encourage women to get vaccinated.