Australia’s first published case of an infant born to a mother with COVID-19 suggests that rooming-in and breastfeeding are safe for newborns, as long as precautions are followed.

Obstetricians from Gold Coast University Hospital in Queensland published details of the case, reporting on the uncomplicated vaginal birth after both parents had been confirmed positive for the coronavirus.

They noted that published data on COVID-19 experiences in pregnancy and delivery had mainly come from China and were almost exclusively caesarean births where infants had been subsequently separated from their mothers for a minimum of 14 days and not breastfed.

“To our knowledge, this is…the first case described of parents with COVID-19 not separated from their infant,” Dr Belinda Lowe and Dr Benjamin Bopp wrote in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.