Sexuality Transmitted Infection in the COVID-19 Pandemic and Non-Pandemic Time

Abstract

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization recognized the SARS-CoV-2 infection as a pandemic. The pandemic itself in addition to its containment measures affects individuals’ lifestyles and welfare including their sexual behaviors. Thus, we hypothesized that sexually transmitted infection (STI) incidence may be changed and so we evaluate urethritis incidence as the most common STI in men and some other related factors. Two cross-sectional surveys during the first 6 months of 2019 and 2020 were undertaken and data were collected from 11 urology offices located in different parts of the capital city. In total, 34,611 male participants were included in our study, and 191 (.55%) patients’ clinical diagnoses were urethritis. The urethritis incidence significantly decreased from 149 of 17,950 (.83%) to 42 of 16,661 (.25%) individuals in the same period of the years 2019 and 2020, respectively ( p -value < .001). There was a higher percentage of single ( p -value = .049) and older ( p -value < .001) urethritis patients in the first 6 months of the year 2020 compared with 2019. Our survey provided urethritis incidence, demographics, symptoms, and treatment characterization. As our results show, the proportion of urethritis patients in all populations admitted to urologist offices had dramatically decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with prior. The indirect effects of the pandemic and its containment measures on people’s sexual health should be noticed and an appropriate reaction and policy-making are recommended to manage issues properly in different aspects of sexual health.