'DEAD' BABY MIRACLE

Orderlies had put the tiny body in a temporary coffin and took it to his parents’ house four hours later. Shortly afterwards, the grieving father opened the box. “I opened it to look at his remains and found that the baby was breathing,” Mr Alvarenga said. “I began to cry.”

He quickly ran back to the hospital with his unnamed son in his arms and nurses placed the infant in an oxygen chamber. The news was then broken to his mother, in the same state-run hospital in Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital.

Doctors said the boy’s condition was now “stable”. An investigation has been launched to establish how the blunder happened.

The head of paediatric intensive care suggested that a doctor may not have properly checked the infant’s vital signs but another doctor said medics had tried to revive the baby for an hour before declaring him dead. “His pulse was so low that it was undetectable,” said Dr Aida Notario.

The smallest on record was an American baby who weighed just 10oz, born at less than 22 weeks.