Social distancing guidelines and resource reallocation during the COVID-19 pandemic have led to significant disruption of sexual health clinics within the USA.1 Little is known about how this disruption has impacted STI reporting. To understand this, we analysed the number of reported cases of STIs within the USA during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports cases of selected infectious diseases as provisional data made available throughout the year by MMWR week, an approximation of calendar week used for reporting.2 For the first 40 weeks of 2019 and 2020, we compiled weekly counts and year-to-date counts of provisional cases of chlamydia, gonorrhoea and primary and secondary (P&S) syphilis. Reporting was also examined relative to national cases of COVID-19 (see figure 1).3
Figure 1
Reporting of chlamydia, gonorrhoea and syphilis during the COVID-19 pandemic. aMoving 3-week average of provisional case counts of chlamydia, gonorrhoea and syphilis as reported by the …
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