WASHINGTON (Washington Insider Magazine) – According to a recent analysis released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the COVID-19 epidemic played a part in the drop in childbirth in the United States in 2021.
The National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the CDC, compared preliminary figures from the 1st half of 2021 to final numbers from the same period in 2020.
They discovered that from January and June of the last year, there were 1.74 million births, a 2% decrease from the 1.78 million childbirths that occurred during the same timeframe in 2020.
According to ABC NEWS, the dip was mostly due to a fall in January births, with 304,000 babies delivered in January 2020 as opposed to almost 277,000 in January 2021, a 9 percent decrease.
Following that significant reduction, the number of births climbed in March and April of the previous year in comparison to 2020, before dipping once again in May and then rebounding by 3% in June.
This is an upswing over the first year of the outbreak when the number of newborns decreased for every month of the 1st half of 2020 as compared to 2019.
In the first half of 2021, the rate of childbirths decreased for all ethnicities and races, according to the data.
White women experienced the smallest decline (less than 1%, from around 916,000 to 914,000 births), while Asian women experienced the largest drop (8%, from roughly 110,000 to 102,000 births).
Furthermore, Asian, Hispanic, Black, and White women saw the greatest reductions in January, while Alaska Native/American Indian and Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian women experienced the greatest drops in May and February, respectively.
The survey also noticed the percentage of child births by state and discovered that in the first half of 2021, Nineteen states as well as Washington, D.C. had fewer births than in the initial half of 2020. There were reductions in seventeen more states, but these were not significant statistically.
With a 9 percent and a 5% fall, respectively, Washington, D.C. and New Mexico had the highest drops.
Meanwhile, the number of births increased in 4 states: New Hampshire, Tennessee, Connecticut, and Idaho.
The COVID-19 epidemic clearly had a part in the drop of births, according to Dr. Brady Hamilton, a researcher at the NCHS, and his team, but it’s uncertain if it was the primary cause and what pandemic-specific variables, such as economic hardship and job insecurity, contributed to the decline.
Hamilton did admit that the significant drop in January 2021 compared to January 2020 indicates that women were not becoming pregnant in March and April 2020, while the 1st COVID lockdowns and stay-at-home mandates were implemented.
