A Chinese newborn has been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus just 30 hours after birth, in what was reported as the youngest case recorded so far, state media outlet Xinhua said.

According to reports, the baby was born on February 2 in Wuhan — the epicentre of the virus — and the mother had earlier been tested positive. It is unclear how the disease was transmitted — in the womb, or after birth.

Only a handful of children have come down with the virus, which has killed 563 people and infected 28,018.

RELATED STORIES

The report further said that the baby, who weighed 3.25kg at birth (7lbs 2oz), was now in a stable condition and under observation.

Medical experts say it could be a case where the infection was contracted in the womb.

“This reminds us to pay attention to mother-to-child being a possible route of coronavirus transmission,” chief physician of Wuhan Children Hospital’s neonatal medicine department, Zeng Lingkong, told Reuters.

But it is also possible that the baby was infected after birth from having close contact with the mother.

“It’s quite possible that the baby picked it up very conventionally — by inhaling virus droplets that came from the mother coughing,” Stephen Morse, an epidemiologist at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, told Business Insider.