The Pandemic brought a Baby Boom to Manatee and Sarasota Counties
Some early numbers are making that suggestion. Overall during the pandemic, nationwide births have been down. The Manatee-Sarasota area may be the opposite of that trend during the COVID pandemic.
Over the past four months, the time when babies conceived during the pandemic started arriving, Manatee County reported more or the same number of births as a year earlier in three of those months, and a decline in only one, December.
In February, there were 281 births, up from a year earlier when there were 229 births, according to figures from them Manatee County Health Department. Births in February 2021 were also up from the same month in 2019, when there were 255 births.
In fact just to the north in the Tampa area, birth numbers are down five to 10 percent for any given month.
Birth Numbers provided by Manatee Memorial Hospital and Lakewood Ranch Medical Center also suggest an increase in the local birthrate, vs elsewhere.
In February, Lakewood Ranch saw a 120 percent increase in the number of babies born: 55, compared to 25 a year earlier.
Manatee Memorial welcomed 141 new babies in February, compared to 133 a year earlier.
Those birth numbers increases were also similar in Sarasota County.
“Based on our births data, at Manatee Memorial Hospital and at Lakewood Ranch Medical Center, we experienced a slight uptick in new babies being born at the end of 2020 versus 2019,” Kevin DiLallo, chief executive officer of Manatee Healthcare System in Bradenton, said in a statement. .
“Manatee Healthcare System hospitals have had the pleasure of caring for the special needs of expectant women and their babies for over 68 years. Manatee Memorial Hospital and Lakewood Ranch Medical Center are the only hospitals in Manatee County that provide Labor and Delivery services including a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. We have precautions in place to ensure the safety of patients and staff including ‘universal masking.’ Universal masking means that everyone who enters and is within our healthcare facility will wear a mask,” DiLallo said.
The increase of birth numbers was similar in Sarasota County.