We have not made any recent modifications to this behavior. It looks like you are using Chrome, thus:
Clicking on an external link (to a website other than sicem365) will open the link in a new tab and give that tab "focus"
Ctrl+Clicking on any link (or right clicking and using the menu option "open in a new tab") will open the link in a new tab but keep the "focus" on your current
I have confirmed this is still the default behavior in Chrome version 74.0.3729.169. If this is not the behavior you are experiencing, I might suggest temporarily disabling any browser extension to see if that helps.