Epidemiological trends in notified syphilis diagnoses during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil

How the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the incidence of syphilis remains unclear.1–4 We extracted data from the Brazilian Unified Health System public disease notification database to compare the mean number of syphilis cases reported from March to December 2017–2019 with those reported the same period of 2020. In all Brazilian macroregions, the incidence rates of syphilis per million population increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching +157% in the Southeast (table 1). The mean increase was +78% overall, corresponding to an additional 161 incident cases per million population. Table 1Incident cases of syphilis (per million population) reported by the Brazilian public health system between March and December of 2017, 2018 and 2019 (reported as mean incidence rate) and in the same period of 2020 Regions of BrazilMean incidence rate...
Source: Sexually Transmitted Infections - Category: Sexual Medicine Authors: Tags: COVID-19 Research letter Source Type: research