Challenges posed by COVID-19 to people who inject drugs and lessons from other outbreaks.

Journal of the International AIDS Society
Tetyana I VasylyevaSamuel R Friedman

Abstract

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, considerable effort is going into identifying and protecting those at risk. Criminalization, stigmatization and the psychological, physical, behavioural and economic consequences of substance use make people who inject drugs (PWID) extremely vulnerable to many infectious diseases. While relationships between drug use and blood-borne and sexually transmitted infections are well studied, less attention has been paid to other infectious disease outbreaks among PWID. COVID-19 is likely to disproportionally affect PWID due to a high prevalence of comorbidities that make the disease more severe, unsanitary and overcrowded living conditions, stigmatization, common incarceration, homelessness and difficulties in adhering to quarantine, social distancing or self-isolation mandates. The COVID-19 pandemic also jeopardizes essential for PWID services, such as needle exchange or substitution therapy programmes, which can be affected both in a short- and a long-term perspective. Importantly, there is substantial evidence of other infectious disease outbreaks in PWID that were associated with factors that enable COVID-19 transmission, such as poor hygiene, overcrowded living conditions and communal ways of u...Continue Reading

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Dec 31, 2020·The New England Journal of Medicine·Joshua A Barocas
Mar 25, 2021·Archives of Sexual Behavior·Brooke G RogersPhilip A Chan
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May 18, 2021·Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community·Sandra L Trappen, Katherine J McLean
May 25, 2021·Frontiers in Psychiatry·Seyed Ramin RadfarAlexander Mario Baldacchino

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