Shandong Zhanhua Yonghao pharmaceutical & Tech Co.,Ltd

As the numbers of COVID-19 infections climb, it’s easy to forget that there are still more than 1.2 million people in the U.S. living with another virus—human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV. When it first swept across the country in the 1980s, HIV was one of the most sobering public health challenges ever faced. It brought a cruel and isolating stigma toward gay men, who died in startling numbers, and it went on to kill 33 million people across the world.

Times have changed. Now, most people don’t die from the virus. Thanks to continuing medical advances in medications, HIV can now be seen as a chronic disease. People who have it can enjoy long careers, get married, and raise families.

“The message that we used to give in the early days of HIV was, ‘Let's try to make your remaining days as comfortable as possible.’ Now, it’s treatable. It's not curable, but it is controllable,” says Merceditas Villanueva, MD, director of the Yale School of Medicine AIDS Program.

Many HIV providers and public health experts believe they can eventually come close to eradicating the virus by 2030 with a goal known as “95-95-95.” In this vision, 95% of people who have HIV would be diagnosed, 95% of them would be receiving treatment, and of those, 95% would have the virus suppressed (the term used when the amount of virus is so low that the patient with HIV stays healthy and has a greatly reduced chance of passing it to others).

“The ultimate goal is getting to zero—and that’s zero new diagnoses, zero new infections, zero deaths, and zero stigma,” says Lydia Aoun-Barakat, MD, medical director of the Nathan Smith Clinic, the HIV clinic at Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH).

Diagnosing and treating HIV may be especially important while COVID-19 is circulating. In July, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that HIV is a significant independent risk factor for severe or critical illness among people who go to the hospital with COVID-19, and also for dying in the hospital from the disease. The WHO drew from clinical surveillance data reported from 37 countries. Nearly a quarter (23.1%) of people with HIV who were hospitalized with COVID-19 died of the disease, according to the report.