Guest post by Matthew Crane and Aleksandra Popovic, second year medical students at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. They would like to thank Dr. Khalil Ghanem and Dr. Andrew Stolbach for their role as senior authors.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted healthcare systems in many ways beyond direct care of COVID-19 patients. One disruption lies in the public health infrastructure for reporting of infectious diseases, such as sexually transmitted infections (STIs). With many resources reallocated towards COVID-19 surveillance, health departments have struggled to maintain their testing capacity for other diseases.
Our study finds that STIs have been dramatically underreported during the pandemic, relative to the same period in 2019. The consequences of this underreporting may have significant implications for future burden of disease in the United States relative to STIs.
Read the full study published in Sexually Transmitted Infections here.
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