Interest in Home Birth During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Analysis of Google Trends Data

Abstract

Introduction: Nearly all (94%-99%) pregnant persons in developed countries search for pregnancy-related information online. The advent of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the associated restrictions in hospital policies may have pushed pregnant persons in the United States to consider giving birth at home to achieve their desired birth experience.

Methods: Google Trends is an open, rich source of real-time, anonymized, relative data on disease patterns and population behavior that provides data in the form of search volume index (SVI): the search volume for a queried term relative to overall search volume for a given time frame and geographic location. The SVI is normalized to a scale of 0 to 100. After the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, Google Trends was queried on February 21, 2021, for the search term home birth with location set to the United States and the time frame March 11, 2019 to February 21, 2021.

Results: The median SVI for home birth during nominally pre-COVID-19 baseline (weeks of March 17, 2019 to March 8, 2020) was relatively constant at 43 (range, 25-56) and increased sharply to 77 during the week of March 15, to 86 during the week of March 22, and peaked at 100 during the week of March 29, 2020. The SVI declined substantially in the following weeks but remained significantly elevated compared with baseline levels. During the approximate 2-year period of query, the states with the highest SVI values (≥80) were Arkansas, Washington, Montana, and Georgia.

Discussion: Interest in home birth spiked in the United States immediately after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic and remained significantly elevated thereafter. These results have implications for caregivers and health systems to ensure safe pregnancies and childbirths through the resolution of the ongoing pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; childbirth; home birth; novel coronavirus; pandemic; pregnancy.