THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States led to disruptions in HIV testing services and access to clinical services throughout 2020. This disruption resulted in a steep, single-year decline in HIV diagnoses that is mostly attributed to declines in testing caused by less frequent visits to health centers, reduced outreach services, and shifting of public health staff to COVID-19 response activities. Given these disruptions, data for 2020 should be interpreted with caution.

COVID-19 disruptions in HIV testing and care during 2020 also made estimations of incidence, prevalence and knowledge of status unreliable. Therefore, the HIV surveillance supplemental report Estimated HIV Incidence and Prevalence in the U.S. was not published this year.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic is still ongoing, more time and data are needed to accurately assess COVID-19's impact on HIV in the United States, the CDC maintained. Assessments of trends in HIV diagnoses that include the year 2020 are discouraged.

The CDC added, "As we continue to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, it is critical that we continue our work to expand and improve HIV prevention, care, and treatment for groups who could most benefit, including persons residing in the South; transgender persons; Black/African American women; and gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men. We should continue our work to improve access to prevention services for persons who inject drugs, a population for whom progress continues to be threatened by the nation's opioid and stimulant epidemics."

"Diagnoses of HIV Infection" is at tinyurl.com/77en99th .

The supplemental report is at tinyurl.com/y9fvs7es .