Wild parties and more sexual partners has led to a surge in sexually transmitted infections (STI) in Ireland, according to a consultant of sexual health.
And the health service is struggling to keep up with the number of people coming forward with waiting lists “for the first time ever.”
Dr Aisling Loy, a consultant of sexual health and HIV care at St James's Hospital has said recent figures in STI’s such as chlamydia, gonorrhoea and syphilis will show a jump as a result of people mixing more post-pandemic.
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However, she said there has been a surge in syphilis and HIV infections in Ireland.
She said: “Syphilis is the one that is genuinely up. And that's up about 25% since 2019.
“People are socialising a bit more since the lockdown happened.
“We definitely on the ground are getting reports of people having wild parties and you know, many more sexual partners than they were used to and I guess that comes with any curtailment, you know that's happened in history.
“We were seeing this rise in syphilis before Covid-19 happened.”
Dr Loy said in the first three months of 2019, there were 118 new diagnoses of HIV in comparison to 250 in the same period of 2020.
However, she explained that it’s her understanding that it’s mostly people who have moved to Ireland and are therefore transferring their care.
She said: “So it's people who are coming to Ireland with HIV, that have asked us for a transfer of care from mostly from actual Latin American countries, and they're coming here to work or to be students and they are transferring their care.
“So we are seeing a big influx, but it's not that they're new diagnoses, it's more that people coming here already have been diagnosed and on treatment.”
But she said anecdotally sexual health consultants are hearing that “condoms are not being used as much which will naturally lead to an increase in STIs.”
She said that there has been an active response within the HSE and an online testing system was rolled out across 22 of the 26 counties.
But Dr Loy said despite this, “we’re still not able to keep up with the levels of infections that we're seeing.”
She said there was also a “jump” in figures for increases in chlamydia, up by 44% and gonorrhoea, up 61% but said this was due to a demand in services after people were not diagnosed during the pandemic.
Speaking to RTE’s Claire Byrne show, she added: “But I would say that for the first quarter of 2022. And again, we really struggled to meet the needs of our patients.
“For the first time ever, we've long waiting lists to get in to see us.”
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