The impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on pregnancy and abortion rates in the Republic of Georgia

Nia Khachidze; Tinatin Manjavidze; Erik Eik Anda; Ingvild Hersoug Nedberg; Ingvild Fossgard Sandøy; Charlotta Rylander

doi:10.1186/s12913-023-10417-7

The impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on pregnancy and abortion rates in the Republic of Georgia

BMC Health Serv Res. 2023 Dec 18;23(1):1435. doi: 10.1186/s12913-023-10417-7.

Authors

Nia Khachidze¹, Tinatin Manjavidze², Erik Eik Anda², Ingvild Hersoug Nedberg³, Ingvild Fossgard Sandøy⁴, Charlotta Rylander²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway. nia.khachidze@uit.no.
² Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway.
³ Department of Health and Care Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway.
⁴ Center for Intervention Science in Maternal and Child Health, Centre for International Health, Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.

Abstract

Background: The Republic of Georgia implemented COVID-19-related restrictions starting on 31 March 2020, when it imposed a 1-month strict lockdown, after which the country continued with some form of restrictions for 1 year. These restrictions created barriers to healthcare access, affected healthcare services, caused severe economic degradation, and changed reproductive behavior. The aim of this study was to explore the impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on pregnancy and abortion rates in Georgia.

Methods: Information on pregnancy, abortion, and related variables was extracted from the Georgian Birth Registry from January 2018 through April 2022. The final study sample included 232,594 pregnancies and 86,729 abortions. We used interrupted time series analysis to study the impact of COVID-19-related restrictions.

Results: There were slightly decreasing trends in pregnancy and abortion rates in the pre-pandemic period (1 January 2018-31 March 2020). During the 1-month strict lockdown (1 April-30 April 2020), pregnancy and abortion rates decreased in all investigated age groups. There were no substantial differences in pregnancy or abortion rates in the pandemic period (for pregnancies: 1 April 2020-30 June 2021; for abortions: 1 April 2020-30 April 2022) compared to the pre-pandemic period. The precision of all estimates suggested that both small increases and decreases in pregnancy and abortion rates are reasonably compatible with our data.

Conclusions: Despite the 1-year-long COVID-19-related restrictions, our results did not indicate substantial long-term changes in pregnancy or abortion rates during the study period for any age group. This may indicate that the restrictions did not substantially influence access to contraception, abortion services, or reproductive behavior.

Keywords: Abortion rate; Birth registry; COVID-19; Lockdown; Pregnancy rate; Restrictions.

MeSH terms

Abortion, Induced*
COVID-19* / epidemiology
Communicable Disease Control
Female
Georgia
Georgia (Republic) / epidemiology
Humans
Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome
Pregnancy