(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Cases of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States increased in the tail end of the pandemic, with syphilis cases experiencing the greatest surge in 70 years.
According to The Daily Wire, cases for chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and congenital syphilis increased across the board.
“STDs continued to increase during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, with no signs of slowing,” the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated.
CDC Division of STD Prevention Director Leandro Mena blamed the spike on underfunded public health programs.
Increased opioid and meth usage has also lead to increased sharing of needles, Mena mentioned, along with decreased usage of condoms among younger Americans.
Overall the number of reported STDs rose from 2.4 million in 2020 to 2.5 million in 2021.
Cases of chlamydia dropped between 2017 and 2020, but rose by 1.6 million cases in the past year. Gonorrhea cases reached more than 696,000, an increase of over 100,000 since 2017.
Syphilis ranked the largest increase in the report, with an increase of 26% rise in one year.
“In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically disrupted life as we knew it, and while there were moments in 2020 when it felt like the world was standing still, sexually transmitted diseases were not,” Jonathan Mermin, the director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, said.
“The unrelenting momentum of STDs continued, even as prevention and treatment services were disrupted. New data CDC data suggests STDs increased during the first year of the pandemic.”
The concerns in the spike have been complicated by the recent outbreak of monkeypox cases.
More than 15,400 cases of monkeypox have been confirmed across the U.S, accounting for nearly 36% of cases worldwide. New York, California, Florida, Texas, Georgia and Illinois ranked in the top five states in terms of number of cases.
