While the coronavirus pandemic savaged the country, another infection spiked, too, with nasty consequences: The nation set new records in 2019 and likely in 2020 for cases of sexually transmitted diseases or infections, illnesses that once were on the brink of control.
As Raul Romaguera, acting director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of STD prevention, wrote of the troubling trend:
“Less than 20 years ago, gonorrhea rates in the U.S. were at historic lows, syphilis was close to elimination, and advances in chlamydia diagnostics made it easier to detect infections. That progress has been lost, due in part to challenges to our public health system.”