Experts believe the country could soon see its first increase in infections in years.
NEW YORK — Some researchers believe COVID-19 has derailed the fight against HIV, siphoning away health workers and other resources and setting back a U.S. campaign to decimate the AIDS epidemic by 2030.
Before COVID-19, health officials were celebrating how new medicines and other developments had gradually tamed HIV, prompting then-President Donald Trump to announce in 2019 a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. epidemic by 2030. The CDC looked at data from a lab that handles about a quarter of the nation’s HIV tests, comparing the numbers from March 13 through September 30 last year with the same period the year before. The agency found there were 670,000 fewer HIV screening tests, and about 4,900 fewer HIV diagnoses than normal.
“People’s sexual behavior changed for only three months,” but prevention, testing and care disruptions are still going on, he said.Data released this week showed the number of new infections declining for years, dropping to about 35,000 in 2019. Recent surges in HIV infections in West Virginia have been tied to intravenous drug use, part of an ongoing shift in how the virus is spreading there. In 2014, 1 in 8 West Virginia HIV cases was attributed to injected drugs. By 2019, nearly 2 out of 3 were, according to state health department data.
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