As people stayed away from hospitals overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases, births at home in the U.S. topped 52,000 in 2021, a 12 percent increase and the highest number in three decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report on Thursday. Between 2019 and 2020, the number rose about 22 percent, “corresponding with the initial surge of COVID-19 cases in the United States,” according to the report. The largest increases in 2021 were among Black women, at 21 percent, and Hispanic women, at 15 percent. White women had a 10 percent increase. The report’s lead author, Elizabeth Gregory, said that while the CDC can’t totally account for the increases, COVID-19 case rates were high and many were still unvaccinated when more people birthed babies at home. Births at home are still rare as they account for just 1.26 percent of births in the U.S., the report said. “For the first time in my whole career, women were more afraid of the hospital than afraid of birth,” Maria Iorillo, a San Francisco midwife working in the field for almost 40 years, told Axios.