COVID-19 impact on bacterial sexually transmitted infections in England between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the delivery of healthcare services, including sexual health services (SHS) in England. Many SHS remained open for urgent or complex cases, but at reduced capacity; meanwhile, the use of online and telephone services increased to meet the continued demand for STI services.1 We compared trends in testing and diagnoses for bacterial STIs in England throughout different periods of COVID-19 restrictions during 2020 with the equivalent prepandemic data for 2019. National data for England on tests and diagnoses for chlamydia, gonorrhoea and syphilis (primary, secondary and early latent stages) between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2020 were extracted from the GUMCAD STI Surveillance2 and the CTAD chlamydia surveillance systems.3 To prevent double-counting, only one test or diagnosis for each STI was counted within a 42-day period. Online tests were defined as self-sampling kits supplied by online service providers. All data were analysed using STATA V.15.1 (Stata, College Station, Texas, USA). Between January and April 2020, testing more than halved for chlamydia, gonorrhoea …