icon-    folder.gif   Conference Reports for NATAP  
 
  Conference on Retroviruses
and Opportunistic Infections
Will be Virtual
Boston USA
March 6-10, 2021
Back grey_arrow_rt.gif
 
 
 
In US Groups COVID Testing More Likely With
HIV, But Positivity Similar With/Without HIV
 
 
  CROI 2021, Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, March 6-10, 2021
 
Mark Mascolini
 
People with HIV infection proved significantly more likely to get tested for SARS-CoV-2 than people without HIV in six large HIV+/HIV- cohorts across the United States [1]. But among people tested, positivity rates were similar with and without HIV.
 
CIVET, the Corona-Infectious-Virus Epidemiology Team, includes data from five clinical cohorts and one established classical cohort in the United States. The five clinical cohorts are Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Kaiser Permanente Mid-Atlantic States, University of North Carolina Health, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and the Veterans Aging Cohort Study. The classical cohort is the combined Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) and Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS).
 
This analysis included cohort members alive and active in the cohort in 2020. The CIVET team calculated the percentage of cohort members with and without HIV who got tested for SARS-CoV-2 and monthly positivity rates from March through August 2020.
 
The overall study group consisted of 55,114 people with HIV and 5,688,550 people without HIV. People with HIV were more likely to be male (about 89% with HIV versus 48% without HIV), more likely to be 50 to 69 years old (about 56% with HIV versus 32% without) than 18 to 49 years old (about 30% with HIV versus 53% without), and more likely to be black (about 41% with HIV versus 10% without) than white (about 37% with or without HIV) or Hispanic (about 10% with HIV and 12% without HIV).
 
From March 1 through August 31, 2020, PCR testing for SARS-CoV-2, self-reports, and clinician reports in the 6 cohorts indicated a slightly but significantly higher COVID-19 testing rates in people with HIV (13.5% to 21.2%) than without HIV (10.8% to 14.3%) (P < 0.001 in each cohort). But SARS-CoV-2 positivity rates did not differ significantly between HIV-positive and negative people across the 6 cohorts: 7.4% vs 7.3% in cohort 1, 3.8% vs 5.0% in cohort 2, 6.4% vs 8.0% in cohort 3, 4.2% vs 7.4% in cohort 4, 3.8% vs 5.6% in cohort 5, and 3.9% vs 0% in cohort 6.
 
Reference
1. Park LS, McGinnis KA, Gordon K, et al. SARS-CoV-2 testing and positivity among persons with and without HIV in 6 US cohorts. CROI 2021, Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, March 6-10, 2021. Abstract 626.