Covid-19 and Population Growth: Insights from pregnancy tests, January 2021 Update

Data: Medicare Statistics - MBS Item: 73806

You can access data on Medicare service items and groups here: Link

Key things to consider according to Medicare are:

  • State/Territory is determined according to the address (at the time of claiming) of the patient to whom the service was rendered.
  • Month is determined by the date the service was processed by Services Australia, not the date the service was provided.
  • Monthly figures may vary due to the varying number of processing days in a month, which depends on the number of days in the month, public holidays, overtime worked etc.

I have used data on Service Item 73806 which is: Pregnancy test by 1 or more immunochemical methods and you can see the item on Medicare website here: Link

I understand that there will not be a complete correlation between the number of pregnancy tests done and the number of births. Not every pregnancy test means a child will be born and on the other hand a pregnant woman may have more than one test. This article attempts to use the data available to help understand a phenomenon that otherwise is hard to quantify.

Jan 2021

Well, there is not much of a trend to report since only a single data point is available for 2021, however, overall, except for NT, the number of pregnancy tests has declined across all other jurisdictions. We need to wait until more data is available for 2021 so we can explore the situation better.