Tuberculosis in the era of COVID-19 in India

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Tuberculosis (TB) still continues to be endemic in various regions of the world, including in India and needs surveillance, clinical assessment, testing, contact tracing, confirmation of diagnosis with supervised or in-supervised treatment regimens for an effective eradication. We assess the challenges due to COVID- 19 pandemic on management of Tuberculosis and current strategies adopted to mitigate them. METHODS: We carried out a comprehensive review of the literature using suitable keywords such as ‘COVID-19’, ‘Pandemics’, ‘Tuberculosis’ and ‘India’ on the search engines of PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar and Research Gate in the month of May 2020 during the current COVID-19 pandemic to assess the impact of COVID-19 on management of Tuberculosis. RESULTS: We found considerable disruption in Tuberculosis service provisions both in the primary care and hospital settings. Lockdown, social distancing, isolation strategies and public health guidelines to prevent viral transmission impacted the delivery of all aspects of Tuberculosis care. CONCLUSIONS: COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact in the delivery of various tuberculosis prevention, surveillance, and treatment programmes. Lockdown and public health guidelines have resulted in tough challenges in traditional management of tuberculosis and has required reconfiguration of methods to support patients including wider use of remote consultations.