America is shy of thousands of twins, because infertility clinics shuttered ... trends now
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America is shy of thousands of twins because fertility clinics shuttered at the start of the pandemic, leading to a 7 percent drop in twin births between 2019 and 2020, government figures reveal.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show the number of twin births fell from 120,291 to 112,437 over that period. The 7 percent decline was greater than the 2 percent-per-year drops seen from 2014 to 2019.
The largest declines were in November and December of 2020 and January 2021, when twin birth rates fell by 10 percent, 14 percent and 7 percent, respectively, compared to the previous year, says the CDC's National Vital Statistics Reports.
Infertility treatments that cause multiple eggs to develop make it more likely that women become pregnant with twins, triplets, or more. The shuttering of fertility clinics at the onset of the pandemic likely accounts for this decline, researchers say.
'The timing of the monthly declines in
