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Gonorrhea infections in Ottawa have soared 65 per cent this year, another spike in the frustratingly upward climb in the city’s rate of sexually transmitted infections, according to Ottawa Public Health.

Gonorrhea infections last jumped in Ottawa in 2013 and health officials assumed they were dealing with a new normal for STIs, said Leslie Tilley, supervisor of OPH’s sexually transmitted and blood born infections management unit. This year, the numbers jumped again.

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“Nurses on the team were saying, ‘Man! More gonorrhea! Really?!’ And when we ran the numbers, we could see that they really were up,” Tilley said.

There have been 446 cases of gonorrhea so far in 2017, compared with 270 cases at the same time in 2016. If the pace continues, there will be 612 cases in 2017, compared with 371 the year before. The number of cases of gonorrhea in Ottawa has increased every year since 2012 when 236 cases were reported.