1.   Mothers often develop infection of the amniotic fluid and womb, but they respond to antibiotic therapy better than do infected newborns, Dr. Schuchat said.

2.   Parents were not told of the test results, meaning that some infected newborns went without treatment until physical symptoms led to the discovery of their illnesses.

3.   So a fallback solution is to identify all infected newborns as early as possible, through blood tests, so that they can be closely monitored and treated.

4.   While that may be true of about one-third of infected newborns, it is not true of the rest.