According to a recent study by Penn State and Quest Diagnostic, the drop in testing could lead to an increase in new STI cases across the nation.
Examining Quest Diagnostics data-which makes up 20% of pre-pandemic STI case reports in the United States-researchers discovered a roughly 60% drop in chlamydia and gonorrhea testing. The reduction is alarming since, according to a University of Michigan study, people continued to have sex.
"You see this drastic decline in testing when things began to shut down," said Penn State College of Medicine assistant professor of public health sciences Casey Pinto. "You wouldn't notice it that way if it were because people simply stopped having sex."
Pinto identifies two reasons for the decrease in testing: people's fear of visiting doctors' offices and the diversion of resources to concentrate on the pandemic.
She claimed that some people weren't getting tested because they were too scared to visit the ER because they didn't want to develop COVID.
People who were exhibiting symptoms of infection continued to get tested, which distorted the findings on the disease's prevalence. According to reports, the number of gonorrhea and chlamydia cases decreased by 17% and 26%, respectively, but the positivity rate rose. This is due to the fact that 80% of gonorrhea and chlamydia cases are asymptotic, which means the diseases most likely spread during the epidemic.
Pinto stated, "We're going to see those people in between show up positive as well. Those cases that were there that didn't get detected had sex with people in between."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 2.3 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia in 2019. STI incidence were already rising annually. It was the sixth year in a row that they had STI case reports that broke records. According to Pinto, there will be a significant rise in reporting in 2021.
"I believe that this year will be significantly worse," she declared. "You can see that 2019 was the peak, that 2020 will see a slight decline due to testing, but 2021 will witness an exponential increase in
The specific type of STI will determine how much the patient suffers from a delayed diagnosis; nonetheless, all infections pose the potential of long-term consequences such as infertility or pelvic inflammatory disease.
The high rates of resistance we are beginning to observe with gonorrhea are something we are very, really concerned about, according to Pinto. "They just changed the guidelines so that we have a completely different treatment regime based on this resistance of gonorrhea."
Higher dosages of the antibiotic are part of the new treatment plan, but experts worry that if the medication loses its effectiveness, they may have trouble finding other ways to treat the condition.
According to Pinto, this study emphasizes how crucial it is to keep funding public health and paying attention to STIs.
"The statistics are shocking-1 in 5 people have a STI-so I really want more people to be aware of STIs," the speaker stated. "They might not directly affect you, but they do affect those around you."
This was the first study to examine how the pandemic affected STIs.