an invaluable source of nutrition to infants”.
Dr. Paul Krogstad spoke about the research of transmission of Covid 19 through breastmilk. He added, “In our study, we found no evidence that breast milk from mothers infected with COVID-19 contained infectious genetic material and no clinical evidence was found to suggest the infants got infected, which suggests breastfeeding is not likely to be a hazard”. This was published in the journal Pediatric Research, which published the results on January 18.
Between March and September 2020, his team evaluated breast milk samples collected from 110 breastfeeding moms. Of the 110 mothers, 65 of them tested positive for COVID; nine tested negative but showed symptoms; and 36 reported symptoms but were not examined. Seven women (6%) with confirmed illness or symptoms had SARS-CoV-2 genetic material (RNA) in their breast milk. However, SARS-CoV-2 RNA was not found in a second sample obtained from the seven women between one and 97 days later.
In the seven samples as well as the other women engaged in the research, infectious SARS-CoV-2 genetic material containing replicating virus particles, referred to as SgRNA, was not discovered. Clinical signs of infection were not observed in the newborns of the seven moms who had viral material in their milk.
According to the researchers, this was a limited research; hence, it may not have included all possible predictors that may influence the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in breast milk. However, they noted that this is a major research to date evaluating probable COVID-19 transmission via breast milk and offers evidence that lactating mothers with confirmed or suspected Covid-positive cases do not transmit the virus to their infants.
