Partially Vaccinated Mother Gives Birth To Baby With COVID-19 Antibodies

An infant in Florida, who was born soon after her mother got the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, was found to have antibodies against the virus.

The baby girl's mother is a frontline healthcare worker, researchers reported in their pre-print report. She got the first dose of the Moderna vaccine just three weeks prior to giving birth. Researchers collected cord blood samples "immediately after birth and prior to placenta delivery" and sent them for SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing, which detected the presence of antibodies.

According to the researchers, this is possibly the first known case of a baby who was born with COVID-19 antibodies to a mother who had gotten the vaccine.

In the past, there have been reports of mothers who passed COVID-19 antibodies to their infants after contracting the disease during pregnancy. Such was the case of a woman in Singapore who gave birth to a baby with COVID-19 antibodies months after she had recovered from the disease.

In the current case, the mother had no history of contracting COVID-19.

"We were very excited to see once the test result came back, that the antibodies from the mom's vaccine did in fact pass through the placenta to the newborn," report co-author Dr. Chad Rudnick said as per WPTV.

But according to the researchers, there are several questions that need to be answered about such cases, including the ideal timing of the vaccination to pass the antibodies and exactly how efficacious the antibodies would be in protecting the infant.

"We urge other investigators to create pregnancy and breastfeeding registries as well as conduct efficacy and safety studies of the COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant and breastfeeding woman and their offspring [sic]," the researchers wrote.

So far, there is "limited" data on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines on pregnant women, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said. Experts believe that the vaccines are "unlikely" to pose risks on pregnant women, but clinical trials to see the safety and efficacy of the vaccines on pregnant women are still underway.

The CDC is also monitoring data on vaccination during pregnancy via safety monitoring systems.

"Most of the pregnancies in these systems are ongoing, so we don't yet have information on the outcomes of these pregnancies," the CDC said. "We need to continue to follow pregnancies long-term to understand effects on pregnancy and infants."