9-Day-Old Premature Baby Dies Of COVID-19 After Mom Contracts Virus

KEY POINTS

Leeming began experiencing cold-like symptoms in early October
The baby died due to severe respiratory distress syndrome
COVID-19 cases among school-age children are driving the current surge in the UK

A premature baby who was born to a woman with COVID-19 has died of the novel coronavirus, according to reports.

Katie Leeming, 22, began experiencing cold-like symptoms during the late stages of her pregnancy in early October and was later diagnosed with COVID-19. She was not vaccinated against the virus, citing cases where others were still diagnosed with COVID-19 despite being inoculated, Aljazeera reported.

Leeming was taken to a northern England hospital within a week of her diagnosis after she stopped feeling her baby moving.

On Oct. 13, doctors delivered Ivy-Rose by emergency cesarean section after detecting reduced movement in Leeming’s womb. The baby was at least 14 weeks premature.

Ivy-Rose, who had been admitted to a specialist neonatal care unit, tested positive for COVID-19 five days after being born. She died on Oct. 22 at 1:30 a.m. due to severe respiratory distress syndrome, baby COVID positive and intraventricular hemorrhage.

Ivy-Rose’s death comes as COVID-19 cases in the United Kingdom continue to surge. On Tuesday, health officials in the U.K. recorded 32,325 new infections and 57 new deaths. The figures now put U.K.’s total number of COVID-19 cases to 9,379,286 and deaths to 142,293, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The current surge of COVID-19 cases in the U.K. is being driven primarily by high infection rates in school-age children. More than a third of all cases reported in recent weeks involved children under the age of 15.

An analysis conducted by The New York Times found that there were 1,815 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 individuals between the ages of 10 to 14 in Britain. In children aged 5 to 9, health officials recorded 726 cases per 100,000 people. There were also 165 cases per 100,000 people aged 0 to 4.

Unlike other countries in Europe, the U.K. only began vaccinating children aged 12 to 15 in mid-September, weeks after summer vacation ended. As of Oct. 29, only 21% of children aged 12 to 15 had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in England.