Maternity mortality rates improve toward pre-pandemic levels, CDC says

Fewer women died in 2022 while pregnant or within 6 weeks of pregnancy compared to the previous year, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.

What does the number breakdown look like year-to-year? Maternal causes killed more than 800 women nationwide in 2022, according to the report. Roughly 1,200 women died from maternal causes in 2021—a peak after three years of steady increases. About 660 died in 2018.

How did these numbers break down across different demographics? The number of women dying from maternal causes decreased for all age groups between 2022 and 2021. Maternal causes killed roughly six times the number of women above the age of 40 as they did those below the age of 25. Although the death rates differed by demographic, maternal causes decreased for black women, white women, and Hispanic women. Maternal causes killed roughly the same amount of Asian women across both years.

Why was there a 2021 spike in maternal death rates? COVID-19 hurt maternal health in the United States, according to the National Institutes of Health. Pregnant women were more susceptible to harm from COVID-19 than non-pregnant women, according to a study that followed Brazilian women. The study attributed the trend partly to disruptions in services for pregnant women and partly to the worsening effects of the COVID-19 virus. More pregnant women found themselves in the intensive care unit, died of maternal causes, lost their unborn children, or had premature births during the pandemic, according to the NIH.

Dig deeper: Read Emma Freire’s report in WORLD Magazine about the collateral damage from COVID-19 vaccine mandates.