04/13/2021
To make up for drop in HIV screenings during pandemic, doctors wrap it into Covid testing.
While everyone’s been focused on the coronavirus pandemic, an epidemic has gotten short shrift, with a drop in people getting tested for HIV.
Between January and October 2020, a team at University of Chicago Medicine tried incorporating universal HIV screening in the emergency department alongside Covid-19 testing, which people could opt out of if they wanted to. The researchers noted that a greater proportion of those being diagnosed there had acute HIV infections than they’d seen in the last few years:
In 2018, 4 out of 39 HIV diagnoses were acute, in 2019, it was 9 out of 39, but in 2020, it was 12 out of 39. In a new research letter, they say that could have to do with disruptions in care and prevention efforts — and that universal screening linked to coronavirus testing could help catch more cases that might otherwise have been missed.
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This cohort study reports the results of incorporating HIV screening into COVID-19 testing at the University of Chicago emergency department.
