Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of babies born with covid-19.

It is not yet possible to say whether any babies have been born in the United Kingdom with COVID-19. With funding from the National Institute for Health Research, the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit are using the UK Obstetric Surveillance System to determine the incidence of hospitalisation with pandemic COVID-19 infection in pregnancy and assess the outcomes of pandemic COVID-19 in pregnancy for mother and infant.

The initial analysis of the data published on 11 May, found that of the 247 women admitted to hospitals in the UK between 1 March and 14 April 2020, six infants tested positive for SARS CoV 2 RNA within the first 12 hours after birth.