BY SANDRA GUY

Though the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the numbers of people who sought HIV testing, researchers continue to explore new ways to prevent and treat HIV infection.

Work also continues to better understand the virus to find a cure. HIV causes AIDS.

These efforts demand more attention than ever this year on World AIDS Day, recognized Dec. 1, which encourages everyone to “Rock the Ribbon.” The motto urges everyone to wear a red ribbon to help raise AIDS awareness and research funds — at your school, your workplace or your community.

No one wants COVID to interfere with HIV and AIDS progress. But because of COVID infection concerns, the number of people in 2020 who sought testing for HIV declined by 22 percent from the year earlier, and the number who opted for HIV prevention services fell by 12 percent, according to the Global Fund, an advocacy group that funds campaigns against HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.

Yet hopeful news and trends remain.

Overall, deaths from HIV have dropped by 51 percent over the past 20 years, moving to the 19th leading cause of death worldwide in 2019, the latest data available, from the eighth leading cause in 2000, according to the World Health Organization.

HIV came to global attention in the 1980s. It has infected 76 million people since then and 38 million people are living with the virus, AIDS resource websites say.

Most people living with HIV take anti-retroviral medicines daily to suppress the virus and reduce their viral load.

But hope abounds. Two pharma giants — Gilead Sciences Inc. and Merck & Co. — have joined forces to develop a long-acting HIV therapy, the next frontier in treating the disease. They’re figuring out whether a combination of two experimental drugs, which the companies had been researching separately, could treat HIV even if taken every several months. And they intend to test a pill version soon, according to media reports.

Separately, a study found as many as 4 percent of HIV carriers in the Democratic Republic of Congo were able to suppress the virus. Fewer than 1 percent of people with HIV are able to do so, typically.

Mary Rodgers, the study’s lead scientist and head of Abbott’s global viral surveillance program, told the BBC

that understanding how the group was able to maintain low or undetectable viral loads would be crucial to controlling the virus.

Facebook: December 1 is World AIDS Day, a day to come together to end the HIV epidemic across the globe. #WorldAIDSDay #WAD2020 #StopHIVTogether #EndHIVEpidemic http://bit.ly/2TkF0a7

Twitter: December 1 is #WorldAIDSDay, a day to come together to #EndHIVEpidemic across the globe. We all have a role to play, so let’s #StopHIVTogether. #WAD2020 http://bit.ly/2TkF0a7

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