Ten Newborn Babies Test Positive For Coronavirus

Ten Newborn babies have tested positive for Coronavirus in Romania.

The hospital authorities are being investigated after the mothers of the newborns all tested negative for the virus.

“The mothers tested negative, but the babies tested positive so we have to consider their contacts with medical staff,” Health Minister Nelu Tataru said in an interview with the Antena 3 TV station late on Monday.

The babies have no symptoms and all but one of them, together with their mothers, have gone into self-isolation at home.

Tataru pointed to the “failures in the activities of both maternity officials and the local public health directorate (DSP)” and promised severe measures if necessary.

The local DSP chief has already been dismissed.

“For the past two days I have felt like I am living in a horror film,” one of the mothers told the local pressalert.ro website.

“The staff were not wearing masks,” she said, adding that the mothers had heard on Wednesday through unofficial channels that there was a case of coronavirus in the hospital.

“On Thursday the hospital was disinfected with us inside,” she said.

The unit in the western Romanian city of Timisoara was briefly placed under quarantine on March 31 but was reopened the next day on the orders of the local DSP, which insisted at the time that there was “no risk of infection for patients or doctors” even though 13 members of staff had already tested positive.