Potential Impact of COVID-19 Response on TB in High-Burden Countries: A Modelling Analysis

Developed by Stop TB Partnership in collaboration with Imperial College, Avenir Health, Johns Hopkins University and USAID

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?

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