Earlier this month, public health officials warned of a syphilis outbreak in Houston, with cases jumping 57 percent between 2019 and 2022. Syphilis is a bacterial infection spread by sexual contact. The outbreak mirrored a national trend in which sexually transmitted infections (STIs), such as chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, are all sharply rising. More than 2.5 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were reported in 2021.
Experts like Dr. Allen Ghareeb, a maternal-fetal medicine fellow based in Washington, tells Salon there are many reasons why STIs are on the rise. For one, like many suspected, the COVID-19 pandemic kept people out of routine care, particularly when it came to sexual and reproductive health. Because many STIs can be asymptomatic, a lack of routine checkups proved to exacerbate the already worrisome trend.
