Hospital Separates Newborn from Parents When They All Test Positive for COVID-19

A newborn baby was taken away from her parents against their wishes, and put in isolation for ten days, in what the hospital claims is an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Previously, both the parents and the child had tested positive for COVID-19.

Little Olivia Santos Sforza, the daughter of Brazilian Geovana Silva Rodrigues dos Santos and Italian Sebastiano Sforza, was born on March 15 at the Pierre Boucher hospital in Longueuil, Quebec. Sebastiano told LifeSiteNews that although his wife’s pregnancy was normal, Olivia was born prematurely, at 36 weeks.

Mother and baby were immediately separated and never reunited because, upon being admitted to the hospital, Geovana was forced to take COVID-19 test, which came back positive.

“The baby, five hours after birth, was transferred to the CUSM [McGill University Health Centre] in Montreal, this facility supposedly better equipped for performing the tests necessary for the baby’s condition,” Sebastiano told LifeSiteNews by email. “Geovana, having received a positive result from the Covid test, had to stay at home for ten days from March 15.”

“I also took a test that came back positive, and so I was also confined to the house. Thus, unfortunately, our baby has had no contact with her parents, above all her mother, since she was born.”

As Olivia, too, had tested positive for the virus, she is in isolation. Her parents have begged the McGill University Health Centre to allow Geovana to stay isolated with her baby in the hospital, but CUSM’s response was that this was impossible, as there was no isolated room with toilet facilities. Sebastiano found this difficult to believe, given Canada’s status as a first world, fully-developed nation.

“What we object to is that after a year of managing the Covid situation, there are no isolated rooms available for a mother and her child to be together at this crucial stage so important for the well-being of a new-born, especially when premature,” the father said. “You never separate a baby from her mother at birth. It’s incomprehensible to us that you can’t find an isolated room with a toilet in modern health facilities in a country like Canada.”

As the ten-day isolation period will end tomorrow, Sebastian is now concentrating on a lawsuit against the hospital for robbing him and his wife of their daughter’s precious first days and for putting the baby’s health in danger by robbing her of qualities the couple believes are essential for her life, but are “totally ignored” by the hospital: encounter, spirituality, physical contact, and mother’s milk, among other things. Read Full Article >