The number of births in Yucatan during the covid-19 pandemic decreased by 18 percent, double what was registered in Mexico and in the world, mainly due to unemployment and economic limitations in that period, reveals a recent investigation.
Not even the economic crisis of 1982-1994, marked by inflation rates of 160% per year and the sustained fall of the economy, had an impact on family planning in the state as much as the covid did, explains the study conducted by Hugo Azcorra Pérez, from the Silvio Zavala Research Center, from Universidad Modelo, and Juan Carlos Salazar Rendón, from the Yucatan Ministry of Health.
Also participating in the investigation were Luis Rodríguez, from the Faculty of Mathematics at UADY; Adriana Vázquez Vázquez, from University College London and Nina Méndez Domínguez, from the High Specialty Hospital of the Yucatán Peninsula.
The first case of covid-19 was detected in Mexico on February 27, 2020. On March 23 of that year, the federal government imposed a lockdown throughout the country.
The lockdown lasted until May 31, 2020. Although in Yucatán, the study recalls, the restrictions on mobility and the use of public spaces lasted until August 2020, when the second wave of Covid-19 hit the state. By May 31, 2022, the number of confirmed cases of this disease had reached 111,452, and the number of deaths had reached 6,933.
Although the pandemic began in March 2020, the study began tracking births nine months later, in December 2020, and throughout the following year.
Between December 2020 and June 2021, the number of births was lower than expected. The most important differences, between the expected births (a figure taken from the historical average of births over several years), and the observed one, were registered in April, May and June 2021.
According to the study, in April 2,863 births were expected in the state and only 1,722 were registered, a 40% decrease, the highest drop during the pandemic.
In May, the expected births were 2,948 and 1,990 occurred, a decrease of 32%, and in June 2,997 were expected and 1,978 were observed, 34% less.
These results, the study adds, suggest a reduction in the number of conceptions that occurred during July-September 2020, the period with the highest number of new cases of Covid-19 in Yucatan. They also show that, from August 2021 until the end of that year, the number of births returned to the growth trend it had before the pandemic.
Another finding of the research is that the decline in the birth rate in Yucatán in 2021 was slightly more pronounced among young adult women (20–29 years old) and among those without previous offspring, who are the most vulnerable to the economic impact of a pandemic, as they tend to have lower incomes, less stable jobs, and less access to social security.
The researchers explain that the 18% decrease in births in Yucatan in 2021 represents a reduction from 12.89 to 12.48 per thousand inhabitants, when in the country this reduction was 10%.
They add that the decrease in the birth rate in Yucatán during the end of 2020 and the first half of 2021 was mainly due to the economic impact of the pandemic, when the Gross Domestic Product in the state decreased by almost 8% in 2020, compared to the previous year and The unemployment rate in Mérida increased 90%, from July to September 2020, compared to January-March of the same year, which represented a loss of more than 20,000 jobs.
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