Newborn baby born to coronavirus patient recovers with no medication

A 17-day-old baby has recovered from the deadly new strain of coronavirus after being born to a patient in the outbreak’s Chinese epicentre.

Xiao Xiao is the youngest in the country to get the all clear, having returned to full health without the help of any medication.

On the day she was born she was transferred to Wuhan Children’s Hospital where she was diagnosed with the strain of coronavirus known as Covid-19.

She had a respiratory infection and minor damage to her heart, but as her symptoms weren’t obvious doctors decided to let her body fight off the disease by itself.

Speaking to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, the hospital’s Department of Neonatology Dr Zeng Lingkong said: ‘She did not have obvious difficulties in breathing, did not cough or have fevers, therefore we only gave her treatment for her myocardial condition.’

Doctors say Xiao Xiao has fully recovered from both her heart disease and coronavirus and was let out of the hospital after four negative tests for the airborne bug.

Dr Zeng added: ‘She even grew bigger and fatter here.’

Earlier this month a woman infected with coronavirus gave birth to a healthy baby girl who was taken to a different ward to her mother.

The patient in Xi’an, capital of northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, was later given the all-clear to go home with her new daughter.

But doctors are still concerned about the Sars-like virus passing through the womb, after a baby boy was diagnosed with coronavirus 30 hours after his birth in Wuhan.

So far in China there have been more than 77,000 cases of the novel coronavirus and 2,500 deaths.

South Korea has had the second highest number of on-land cases with 833 infections and seven deaths

Seven have been killed by the virus in Italy, with the death toll more than doubling since this morning, while the number of cases has risen to 220.

France has seen one death, compared to six in Iran, one in the Philippines and one in Japan.