The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new estimates on the HIV incidence rate on August 3.  Incidence rate means the number of new infections during a specific time period. The CDC estimates that the current number of HIV incidence in the United States has gone up from 40,000 to 56,300, a 40 percent increase (read the full article here). The revised estimate does not represent an actual increase in the number of new HIV infections but reflects better HIV testing, more precise measures of HIV incidence, and better reporting of HIV cases to the CDC.[i]

The release coincides with the largest HIV/AIDS gathering in the world, the International AIDS Conference (IAC) in Mexico City, Mexico and comes on the heels of other data suggesting the HIV epidemic is worse than we thought (see SIECUS’ March policy update “CDC Releases New Reports Showing an Increase in STD Prevalence, Increase In HIV Cases”).[ii] For at least a decade it had been estimated that at least 40,000 new HIV infections occurred annually. The new estimate shows that older surveillance technology has underreported HIV incidence by about 15,000 to the CDC (see SIECUS’ press release here).[iii]

The estimate is taken from reported HIV diagnoses to the CDC of individuals 13 years or older (with or without a concurrent AIDS diagnosis) from 22 states in 2006.  Several states and territories that have reported relatively high HIV incidence data in the past such as California, Massachusetts, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, were not included in the data.[iv] A new and more precise method of HIV incidence surveillance allows for distinguishing new HIV infections from longstanding ones and helps determine how long the individual has been infected with the virus (for more information, see “Using the BED HIV-1 Capture EIA Assay to Estimate Incidence Using STARHS in the Context of Surveillance in the United States”).