THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 RESPONSE ON TUBERCULOSIS IN HIGH-BURDEN COUNTRIES: A MODELLING ANALYSIS

Type Report Author Stop TB Partnership Author Imperial College London Author Avenir Health Author Johns Hopkins University Author USAID URL http://www.stoptb.org/assets/documents/news/Modeling%20Report_1%20May%202020_FINAL.pdf?utm_source=The+Stop+TB+Partnership+News&utm_campaign=4bee55b759-partner+survey+2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_75a3f23f9f-4bee55b759-190025267 Institution Stop TB Partnership / Imperial College London (ICL)/ Avenir Health / Johns Hopkins University / USAID Abstract The global response to COVID-19 has slowed the spread of the virus for now but is continuing to cause serious, short and longer term, disruptions to the programmes for other major diseases. For tuberculosis (TB) in particular, lockdowns on society are already showing signs of severely curtailing diagnosis and notifications (1) and potentially the availability of drugs (2). A modelling study was therefore developed, to address the following questions:What is the potential impact of short-term lockdowns on TB incidence and mortality over the next 5 years, in high-burden countries?Following the lockdown, how can countries best accelerate the restoration of their TB control, to bring TB burden back under control? Building on work for the 2019 Lancet Commission on TB (3), the modelling focuses on three high burden settings: India, the Republic ofKenyaand Ukraine. Estimates from these countries were also extrapolated to create global estimates, for the impact of COVID-19 on TB.