COVID-19 Wider Impacts - Antenatal Bookings

As an essential service, maternity care including ‘booking’ has been provided throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and women have been encouraged to attend all their scheduled antenatal appointments. However, how some elements of maternity care are delivered has changed in order to minimise the number of visits women need to make. The ‘booking’ appointment is the first main appointment a woman has with her local maternity service once she knows she is pregnant. At the booking appointment, women are assessed by a midwife who can then tailor the subsequent care they receive during their pregnancy to their particular preferences and needs. Women are encouraged to book before they are 13 weeks pregnant, and ideally before they are 10 weeks pregnant.

In general, prior to COVID-19, women were offered an initial in-person booking appointment (including various face to face tests such as blood tests and blood pressure monitoring) then a follow up appointment for their early pregnancy ultrasound scan. Since March 2020, in many areas women have been offered an initial remote consultation, then an in-person ‘one stop’ follow up appointment for all their face to face tests and their scan.

This dataset shows the number of women booking for antenatal care in each week from the week beginning 1 April 2019 onwards. In addition to the weekly data, monthly data (based on exact month of booking rather than summation of sequential weeks) is presented for each NHS Board of residence, including the Island Boards. Due to small numbers, weekly data is not shown for individual Island Boards of residence (NHS Orkney, NHS Shetland, and NHS Western Isles), however the Island Boards are included in the Scotland total.

This data is also available on the COVID-19 Wider Impact Dashboard. Additional data sources relating to this topic area are provided in the Links section of the Metadata below. Information on COVID-19, including stay at home advice for people who are self-isolating and their households, can be found on NHS Inform.

All publications and supporting material to this topic area can be found in the weekly COVID-19 Statistical Report. The date of the next release can be found on our list of forthcoming publications.