Statewide stay-at-home orders put in place as Tennessee fought to control the spread of coronavirus last March were associated with a 14% lower rate of preterm birth, according to a research letter published today in JAMA Pediatrics.
Preterm infants have higher morbidity and mortality risks than babies born at term.
Senior author Stephen Patrick, MD, director of the Vanderbilt Center for Child Health Policy and a neonatologist at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, and his colleagues had observed in March that there appeared to be fewer infants than usual in the NICU at the children’s hospital. Along with colleagues at the Tennessee Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the team aimed to test if these anecdotal observations were related to the statewide lockdown order.
The study is the first in the United States to confirm the trend that more persons staying at home, essentially on forced bed rest, reduced the number of late preterm infants (34-35 weeks).