Health officials are warning Americans of sharply rising cases of sexually transmitted disease, including a 26 percent spike in new syphilis infections reported last year – the highest since 1991 and most number of total cases since 1948.
Last year alone, there were 1.6 million cases of chlamydia reported, nearly 700,000 cases of gonorrhea, over 171,000 cases of syphilis and 2,677 of cases of syphilis among newborns, the CDC reports. The spike in cases comes despite the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
