A Florida woman died from Covid-19 days after giving birth to her healthy baby girl via emergency C-section.
Kristen McMullen, 30, was admitted into the hospital on July 21 with COVID-19 and pneumonia. According to her aunt Melissa Syverson, she was sent home after staying four days but hospitalized again on July 26.
McMullen’s daughter was born on July 27, NBC News reported. After an emergency c-section birth delivered the baby, the mother was transferred to the intensive care unit.
She passed on August 6; the same day doctors put her on a ventilator, the Atlanta Journal-constitution reported.
Despite the mother’s illness, the baby girl is healthy.
It is unknown if McMullen had received the COVID-19 vaccine. Her family told NBC News that people need to be careful when around pregnant women regardless of their vaccination status.
“We personally feel that whether a pregnant woman is or isn’t [vaccinated] or whether they wear a mask or don’t wear a mask, we feel like they’re at a huge risk potentially for it to be deadly for them or their baby,” McMullen’s aunt told the news outlet.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta urged pregnant women to get vaccinated due to the delta variant of the coronavirus surging in the country.
CDC data reported only about 23% of pregnant women had received at least one dose of a vaccine.
“The vaccines are safe and effective, and it has never been more urgent to increase vaccinations as we face the highly transmissible delta variant and see severe outcomes from COVID-19 among unvaccinated pregnant people,’’ CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement, The Associated Press reported.
