HEALTH
NY Extends Timeline in Plan to End AIDS to 2024
State’s original goal sought to reduce new infections to 750 by 2020
BY DUNCAN OSBORNE
While the Plan to End
AIDS made important
gains in the
fi ght against HIV, it
fell short of achieving a central and
original goal of reducing estimated
new HIV infections to 750 across
New York State and 600 in New
York City by 2020.
“This year’s Ending the Epidemic
Summit is a time to refl ect on
both the progress we’ve made and
the challenges we still face, and to
reenergize our shared goal of ending
the AIDS epidemic by 2024,”
Governor Kathy Hochul said in a
November 30 press release. In extending
the timeline to 2024, the
governor’s offi ce cited the impact of
the COVID-19 pandemic.
The governor’s press release
reported that there were an estimated
1,467 new HIV infections
statewide in 2020. A New York City
health department HIV surveillance
report that is released annually
on December 1, World AIDS
Day, reported that there were an
estimated 1,200 new HIV infections
in the city in 2020. While
those estimates do show a continuing
decline in new HIV infections,
they remain above the targets.
Launched in 2014, the Plan
to End AIDS was conceived by
Charles King, the chief executive
of Housing Works, an HIV services
organization, and Mark Harrington,
the executive director of
the Treatment Action Group, an
New York State Governor Kathy Hochul announced an extension of the timeline in the Plan to End AIDS.
advocacy organization.
King and Harrington envisioned
moving people who are newly infected
into treatment quickly to
keep them healthy and to reduce
the amount of HIV in their bodies
to the point that they would be
unable to infect others. The plan
linked HIV-positive people to medical
care and housing, nutrition,
transportation, and other services.
Those services make it easier for
people to stay on anti-HIV drugs.
The plan deployed pre-exposure
prophylaxis (PrEP), which gives
anti-HIV drugs to HIV-negative
people to keep them from acquiring
HIV, and post-exposure prophylaxis
(PEP), which gives anti-HIV
drugs to HIV-negative people with
a recent exposure to the virus to
keep them from becoming infected.
Both drug regimens are highly
effective when used correctly.
King marshalled support from
REUTERS/DAVID ‘DEE’ DELGADO
HIV and health groups across the
state. He won endorsements and
money from Governor Andrew
Cuomo, who resigned this year
following credible allegations from
multiple women that he had sexually
harassed them, and Bill de
Blasio, whose fi nal term as mayor
will end January 1.
The organizations engaged in
the plan tracked their progress on
a website that shows success on
a number of goals. On some measures,
the plan did not meet its
targets, but still showed progress.
A major goal, and probably its
most ambitious goal, was to reduce
the number of estimated new HIV
infections to 750 statewide in 2020.
New HIV diagnoses could have occurred
years before the diagnosis
was made. Estimated new HIV infections
are the gold standard. Since
most new HIV infections in New
York occur in New York City, the city
adopted its own target of 600 estimated
new HIV infections in 2020.
In 2019, government offi cials
and activists were already conceding,
at least tacitly, that they
were unlikely to hit the numbers
for estimated new HIV infections
in 2020. In 2020, the new targets
for that metric on the Ending the
AIDS Epidemic dashboard were
changed to 825 statewide and
660 in the city. In her November
30 statement, Hochul moved the
target date to the end of 2024, giving
the plan another three years
to meet all of its goals. Those goals
remain ambitious.
The new deadline gives the state
three years to produce a 44 percent
decline in new HIV infections.
The city’s estimated 1,200 new
HIV infections in 2020 require that
it produce a 45 percent decline in
estimated new HIV infections to
achieve 660 new infections in three
years. The surveillance report
shows that the city took from 2016
through 2020 to reduce estimated
new HIV infections from 1,700 to
1,200, a 29 percent decline.
The city reported 1,396 new
HIV diagnoses in New York City in
2020, with 1,091 occurring among
men and 256 occurring among
women. Forty-nine trans people
were newly diagnosed in 2020.
Forty-seven percent of the new
HIV diagnoses in 2020, or 661,
were among Black people; 474, or
34 percent, were among Latinx
individuals; and 187 of the new
HIV diagnoses, or 13 percent, were
among white people. Sixty-four
percent of the new diagnoses, or
893, occurred among people aged
20 to 39. In its press release, the
city noted the disparities.
“Of all cisgender and transgender
women newly diagnosed with
HIV in 2020, 92% were Black or
Latina, and of all cisgender and
transgender men newly diagnosed,
79 percent were Black or Latino,”
the press release read. “Of all men
newly diagnosed with HIV in 2020,
59 percent were men who have
sex with men (MSM); of all new
diagnoses among MSM, 78 percent
were among Black or Latino MSM,
79 percent of whom were ages 20-
39 years. And nearly half of New
Yorkers newly diagnosed with HIV
in 2020 lived in neighborhoods of
high or very high poverty.”
The city has seen large declines
among injection drug users due to
the distribution of clean needles. In
2020, 12 new HIV diagnoses were attributed
injection drug use with another
10 attributed to injection drug
use among MSM. Mother-to-child
transmission accounted for just two
new HIV diagnoses. Where the city
has failed is in delivering effective
HIV prevention services to Black and
Latinx gay and bisexual men.
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