Three Times More HIV Infections In NYC That Rest of America

Author: Joanne Oatts

New Yorkers are contracting HIV at three times the national rate, the city’s health department has claimed, with half of the city's infections occurring among gay and bisexual men.

In the latest stats, 72 in every 100,000 New Yorkers became infected with HIV, compared with the US national average of 23 infections in every 100,000.

A total of 4,800 people contracted HIV in 2006 in New York, bringing the total currently in living in NYC's population of 8.2 million to 100,000.
Monica Sweeney, the city health department's assistant commissioner for HIV prevention and control, said the numbers will help New York better allocate resources to fight the epidemic.
Black men and women were also infected at three times the rate of white people, with 17% of the total number of new infections were among black men who have sex with men.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has collected the data using a new formula, tested blood samples found to be HIV-positive to determine when the infection occurred. Previous data did not distinguish recent infections from those that occurred years earlier.