Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its latest data on sexually transmitted infections in the first year of the pandemic. In the first months of 2020, the number of people diagnosed with gonorrhea and syphilis decreased as expected – after all, it was a time of extreme isolation for many. Subsequently, however, the infection rate rose so much that by the end of the year, the number of cases was 10% and 7% higher than in 2019. There were a total of about 134,000 reports of syphilis and 678,000 reports of gonorrhea. These were “stunning” increases, said Hillary Reno, an associate professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine and medical director of the St. Louis County Sexual Health Clinic. “I can’t tell you how many primary care doctors called me recently and said, ‘I just saw my first case of syphilis this year.’
In fact, syphilis was almost eradicated in the United States around 2000; gonorrhea reached its lowest infection rate in 2009. Many physicians who began practicing during this period had no experience in diagnosing these STIs, especially in their patients. According to Ina Park, a professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, “There are a whole generation of doctors and clinicians who have never seen syphilis in women and babies before.
This is a significant problem: STIs can irreversibly damage the reproductive system. At least 20,000 women become infertile from untreated STIs in the United States each year. Syphilis can cause wounds and rashes and, if left untreated for decades, fatal damage to the brain, heart and other organs. Gonorrhea can be painful and can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease in women. Any condition is caused by bacteria and can be cured with antibiotics (although drug-resistant strains of the bacterium that causes gonorrhea are on the rise). Unfortunately, they are often asymptomatic, especially in women, and it may be harder for them to see signs of infection and easier to confuse some of these signs, such as normal flow or fungal infections.
The ease with which STIs go unnoticed makes it crucial to have them tested regularly. And yet this is not happening. “The pandemic has worsened STIs in America – for the first year, people have almost stopped testing and treating,” said David K. Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of Directors of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, a trade association for state and local STIs. programs that collected their own data during the pandemic. (CDC data comes from a national surveillance system that includes mandatory laboratory reporting and pilot studies.) In addition, follow-up contacts appointed to notify sexual partners of exposure were redeployed to focus on Covid.
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