Coronavirus-infected woman dies after giving birth in Lithuania

KAUNAS – A coronavirus-infected young woman died after giving birth in a hospital in Lithuania's second-biggest city of Kaunas on Wednesday. 

"We believe that the main cause of death was severe lung damage caused by COVID-19," Tomas Tamosuitis, head of the Intensive Care Clinic at the Kauno Klinikos hospital of Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, told a news conference on Thursday.

Mindaugas Kliucinskas, head of the hospital's Maternity Unit, said the 23-year-old woman had not been vaccinated. He urged pregnant women to get vaccinated, saying that the jab has no effect on pregnancy.

The patient, whose respiratory function was deteriorating, was transferred to Kauno Klinikos from another Kaunas hospital on October 21. 

The woman delivered a healthy baby girl through a cesarean section. The mother continued to be treated at the COVID-19 unit, but was transferred to the intensive care unit as her respiratory condition deteriorated further, the hospital said.

This is in the first such death in Lithuania.