The number of HIV tests and new diagnoses has dropped in 2020. Bad news, a representative of Sidaction, which begins this Friday, explains to BFMTV.com.
Has the Covid-19 pandemic slowed down HIV testing? According to Public Health France, the number of positive HIV findings fell by 22% in 2020 compared to the previous year. On the occasion of the opening of Sidaction this Friday, Sandrine Fournier, director of the financing, research and associations division within the association, summarizes the concerns of specialists.
Why is the decrease in the number of HIV diagnoses not good news?
Sandrine Fournier: “This drop in new discoveries of 22% is a sham drop. This might indeed reflect, although to a lesser extent, the decrease in new infections, in particular with confinement and the curfew which have, as we know, limited encounters and sexual interactions. But the analysis shows that this drop is mainly linked to a decrease in screening.
It should also be remembered that the profile of those screened remains stable: slightly more than half of the men and women diagnosed had never carried out screening before. While HIV testing had increased between 2013 and 2019, it decreased by 14% between 2019 and 2020. This is considerable. This represents 650,000 fewer screenings.
What is worrying is that 30% of people diagnosed are at an advanced stage, that is to say that the disease has already weakened their immune system – without being at the AIDS stage, when the disease is very advanced.
We know that the earlier we are detected, the earlier the treatments are put in place and the better we live. Today, there is every reason to fear a delay in screening and a possible epidemic rebound.
Do you have any idea what this epidemic rebound might represent?
“We cannot assess it. Especially since for two years, the actors who participate in the collection of data have been mobilized on the Covid front. This is why the figures communicated for the year 2020 are not neither robust nor exhaustive.We hope to have slightly more reliable reports for 2021, but we will not have them before the end of the year.
The problem is that the majority of people who transmit HIV are unaware of their HIV status and the fact that they are carriers of the disease.
Of those who discovered their HIV status, some 14% were under 25 and 22% over 50. These are the two categories of people you don’t think regarding and yet the numbers don’t go down.”
How can this drop in the number of screenings be explained?
“It should be remembered that in 2018, for the first time and following a ten-year plateau, there was a 7% decrease in new diagnoses. This was good news: it reflected a drop in new infections but also a better use of screening, combined with the effects of treatments for HIV-positive people and preventive treatments, all this from year to year.
The decline in screenings and diagnoses that we have been witnessing since the Covid-19 crisis is explained by the conjunction of several factors. During the pandemic, access to laboratories has been difficult, with often long queues. Another element to take into account, the screening centers in hospitals are in the infectious disease departments, which were fighting once morest the pandemic.
And then we must not forget that the Covid has long been scary, causing laboratories and screening centers to be avoided for fear of catching the disease.
Many prevention or screening operations might not take place. However, the screenings that obtain the best results are those organized by associations, often community ones. These associations turn directly to the targeted communities, African or LGBT for example. They know where to find them. This type of operation detects seven times more positive people than in the laboratory. It must be hammered home, testing is the keystone in the fight once morest HIV.”
