A partially vaccinated mother has passed on COVID-19 antibodies to her baby.
The South Florida frontline health care worker got her first dose of the Moderna vaccine at 36 weeks, CBS News reports.
Three-weeks later, she gave birth to a healthy baby girl, who doctors believe is the first baby in the U.S. to be born with antibodies that may offer up protection against the novel virus.
According to the woman’s pediatricians, Dr. Paul Giblert and Dr. Chad Rudnick of Boca Raton, the antibodies were discovered after analyzing the blood from the baby’s umbilical cord following birth.
"We have demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies are detectable in a newborn's cord blood sample after only a single dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine," they concluded. "Thus, there is potential for protection and infection risk reduction from Sars-CoV-2 with maternal vaccination."
Since the mom never contracted COVID-19, the antibodies had to come as a result of the vaccine. "She had no exposures or symptoms," he noted.
It was previously known that mothers infected with the virus can pass on antibodies, but since this is the first known case of antibodies stemming from the vaccine, doctors do not know how long the window of protection is.
"Further studies have to determine how long this protection will last," Rudnick told WPBF. "They have to determine at what level of protection or how many antibodies does a baby need to have circulating in order to give them protection."
"It was an idea that we've had that we've seen with other vaccines we've given women who are pregnant," Giblert told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. "Things like the flu vaccine and the whooping cough vaccine which are standard, we know that those can pass protection in antibodies to babies. So the hypothesis was that the same thing would happen with the COVID vaccine."
The CDC explains that in the final three months of pregnancy, mothers pass down antibodies to their children through the placenta, which offers temporary immunity spanning the babies first few weeks or months of life.
As more pregnant women choose to get vaccinated against COVID019, doctors expect more babies to be born with coronavirus antibodies.
"This is one small case in what will be thousands and thousands of babies born to mothers who have been vaccinated over the next several months," Rudnick said.
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