In new research presented at the United States Conference on HIV/AIDS (USCHA) 2021 Annual Meeting, investigators reported that HIV testing centers across the country witnessed a decline in testing of around 50% during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. This has raised concerns about a surge in transmission by people who are not aware of their HIV-positive status.

According to data from the National HIV Prevention Program Monitoring and Evaluation (NHM&E) system, the number of CDC-funded HIV tests was reported to drop by over 1 million in 2020 when COVID restrictions were in place. A total of 1,228,142 tests were conducted that year compared to 2,301,669 tests in 2019, with a decline of 46.6%. The number of people newly diagnosed with HIV, based on the tests, dropped by 29.7%, from 7692 in 2019 to 5409 in 2020, reported the investigators... (Medscape)