Until 2020, tuberculosis (TB) was annually the number one infectious killer disease globally. When the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, TB took the number two seat in this said ranking, but a very close second.1 TB epidemiologists around the world became very concerned about what might happen with global TB burden in the wake of the pandemic, fearing that lockdowns of health systems and stay-at-home orders would increase TB transmission, decrease access to treatment and screening, and ultimately lead to a surge in incidence and mortality. Recent work by Kendall et al 2 published in Thorax set out to answer two questions: what was the impact of the pandemic in Uganda, and how did active TB case finding efforts help? In this well-performed study, active case finding (ACF) campaigns were conducted prior to the pandemic in 2019 and post-pandemic in 2021. The proportion of TB cases identified through this campaign dropped from 0.94% in 2019 to 0.54% in 2021. The authors concluded that community-wide active TB case finding could have a meaningful impact on TB burden at the population level, even in the wake of reduced access to diagnostic and treatment facilities and potentially increased contact to infectious individuals within families or other close-contact circles. These findings, while exciting, warrant …

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大流行后结核病发病率：主动发现病例是否可能成功？

直到 2020 年，结核病 (TB) 每年都是全球第一大传染病杀手。当 2020 年 COVID-19 大流行开始时，结核病在上述排名中位居第二，但紧随其后。1 世界各地的结核病流行病学家开始非常担心大流行后全球结核病负担可能会发生什么，担心卫生系统的封锁和居家令会增加结核病传播，减少获得治疗和筛查的机会，并最终导致发病率和死亡率激增。Kendall 等人最近在《Thorax》上发表的研究 2 旨在回答两个问题：这一流行病对乌干达的影响是什么，以及活跃的结核病病例发现工作有何帮助？在这项表现良好的研究中，在 2019 年大流行之前和 2021 年大流行之后开展了主动病例发现 (ACF) 活动。通过该活动发现的结核病病例比例从 2019 年的 0.94% 下降到 2021 年的 0.54%。作者得出结论，社区范围内的活动性结核病病例发现可能对人口层面的结核病负担产生有意义的影响，即使是在诊断和治疗设施的使用机会减少以及家庭内或其他密切接触者与感染者的接触可能增加的情况下界。这些发现虽然令人兴奋，但值得……