A significant increase in Tuberculosis diagnosis is required to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on its future burden (preprint)

ABSTRACT

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has greatly disrupted our everyday life, forcing the adoption of non-pharmaceutical interventions in many countries worldwide and putting public health services and healthcare systems worldwide under stress. These circumstances are leading to unintended effects such as the increase in the burden of other diseases. Here, using a data-driven epidemiological model for Tuberculosis (TB) spreading, we describe the expected rise in TB incidence and mortality that can be attributable to the impact of COVID-19 on TB surveillance and treatment in four high-burden countries. Our calculations show that the reduction in diagnosis of new TB cases due to the COVID-19 pandemic could result in 824250 (CI 702416-940873) excess deaths in India, 288064 (CI 245932-343311) in Indonesia, 145872 (CI 120734-171542) in Pakistan, and 37603 (CI 27852-52411) in Kenya. Furthermore, we show that it is possible to revert such unflattering TB burden scenarios by increasing the pre-covid diagnosis capabilities at least a 75% during 2 to 4 years. This would prevent almost all TB-related excess mortality caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which will be observed if nothing is done to prevent it. Our work therefore provides guidelines for mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on tuberculosis epidemic in the years to come.