Extract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and associated response have undoubtedly had a dramatic multidimensional impact on healthcare services globally, severely disrupting care for many chronic diseases [1, 2]. Direct impact on communicable diseases, such as tuberculosis (TB), especially in developing countries disproportionally affected by TB, is not yet fully understood but is very likely to put national TB programmes under immense pressure and lead to an increase in TB deaths of 8–20% in the near future [3–5]. This predicted increase is largely caused by delays in diagnosis and treatment of new TB cases due to non-pharmaceutical interventions implemented nationally and globally, in order to contain virus transmission [3, 6–8]. Combined COVID-19 and TB infection also poses a challenge from various perspectives [9]. It is anticipated that the number of co-infected patients increases as the pandemic progresses.
Abstract
Sustainable support from healthcare bodies is needed to preserve TB laboratory capacity, and maintain personnel and skills, to minimise negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on laboratory services severely disrupted in the early months of pandemic https://bit.ly/38camaL
Footnotes
The ERLTB-Net-2 study participants are: Alexander Indra, Austria; Anabel Abela, Malta; Anne Torunn Mengshoel, Norway; Despo Pieridou, Cyprus; Edita Vasiliauskienė, Lithuania; Elizabeta Bachiyska, Bulgaria; Ewa Augustynowicz-Kopeć, Poland; Florian Maurer, Germany; Gudrun Svanborg Hauksdottir, Iceland; Hanna Soini, Finland; Inga Norvaisa, Latvia; Lanfranco Fattorini, Italy; Ljiljana Žmak, Croatia; Manca Zolnir-Dovc, Slovenia; Margaret Fitzgibbon, Ireland; Mathys Vanessa, Belgium; Melinda Medgyaszai, Hungary; Monika Polanova, Slovakia; Monique Perrin, Luxembourg; Norah Easy, UK; Panayotis Ioannidis, Greece; Rita Macedo, Portugal; Roxana Mihaela Coriu, Romania; Sofia Samper, Spain; Tiina Kummik, Estonia; Troels Lillebaek, Denmark; Věra Dvořáková, Czech Republic.
Conflict of interest: V. Nikolayevskyy reports grants from ECDC, during the conduct of the study.
Conflict of interest: Y. Holicka has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: D. van Soolingen has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: M.J. van der Werf has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: C. Ködmön has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: E. Surkova has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: D. Hillemann has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: R. Groenheit has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: D. Cirillo has nothing to disclose.
Support statement: This study has received funding from ECDC (grant ECDC/GRANT/2018/001). Funding information for this article has been deposited with the Crossref Funder Registry.
- Received September 29, 2020.
- Accepted October 29, 2020.
- The content of this work is copyright of the authors or their employers. Design and branding are copyright ©ERS 2021.
This version is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence 4.0.
