Five months old from Brazil recover from Covid-19

Sao Paulo, Brazil: News no short of a miracle for a family from Brazil is making the headlines today. After spending a month in an induced coma due to Covid-19, Dom, a 5-month-old Brazilian baby, gets to go home and celebrate his 6-month birthday.

A few months after he was born, Dom was diagnosed with Covid-19 at the Pro-Cardiaco hospital in Rio de Janeiro. He spent 54 days in the hospital. “He spend 32 of them in an induced coma and connected to a ventilator,” said Dom’s father, Wagner Andrade.

“He had some difficulty breathing so the doctors thought it was a bacterial infection,” he further added. “But the medication didn’t work and he got worse. Then I and my wife decided to take him to a second hospital and they tested him. It was coronavirus.”

It’s still uncertain how Dom contracted coronavirus. He may have been exposed during a visit to a relative’s home, according to Andrade.

The family was in their home when they noticed difficulty in their baby’s breathing. “My wife noticed this noise at the end of his breathing,” Mr. Andrade said. “We called a few doctors and one of them told us to record a video. After she saw it, she ordered us to take him immediately to the hospital.”

Andrade and his wife, Viviane Monteiro, say it was a “miracle” that Dom recovered. Dom was hospitalized for nearly two months.

“First, I felt relieved, and then indescribable happiness,” Andrade said. “We were longing to get him back home for more than 50 days.”

Dom will celebrate his 6-month birthday on June 14 at home with his parents, surrounded virtually by relatives.

In the pandemic front, Brazil has reported at least 25 COVID-19-related deaths among babies up to 12 months of age, according to data from the country’s ministry of health.

In the last week, Latin America has become the epicenter of the global pandemic. With 465,166 confirmed cases of the virus and 27,878 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data, Brazil is the hardest-hit country in the region.