Two years of Covid take toll on HIV detection in Delhi

This, however, is a cause of concern for the officials. There wasn’t an actual decrease in the number of cases, they say. Rather, fewer people going to hospitals during the lockdown and surge in Covid resulted in a decline in detection of HIV cases over the last two years, according to officials from Delhi’s health department.

In comparison, around 6,000 new cases were detected in Delhi each year before the pandemic.

“The decline in the number of HIV cases isn’t good news. This means we were unable to detect 4,000 cases,” said a Delhi government official. The official explained that even though the programme uses several approaches to detect as many cases as early as possible, the main source of detection is at hospitals where people might have gone for the treatment of other diseases.

“One of the main approaches of the programme is to routinely test persons from high-risk groups such as sex workers and injection drug users. However, only about one in six cases that we detect each year under the programme are among people from high-risk groups. Another 0.1% of the cases are detected in pregnant women during their ante-natal check-up. Most cases are usually detected when people go to hospitals and get tested before invasive procedures and surgeries; patients are routinely tested before procedures to ensure the safety of healthcare workers,” he said.

With hospitals focusing on Covid patients during the surge, and routine surgeries being delayed, many persons remained undetected. A person may not show any symptoms for ten years or more after an HIV infection. The viral infection damages the cells of the body’s immune system, thereby reducing its ability to fight off infections effectively.

Nearly 5% of the HIV cases are also detected through referral of patients from the country’s TB programme. Patients with HIV are more prone to getting TB. However, data from the national TB programme showed that there was a 25% decline in the detection of TB during 2020.

The pandemic affected several routine healthcare initiatives of the government, including the delivery of antiretroviral therapy for persons with HIV. DSACS allowed people to get medicines for 3 months at a go to reduce the number of hospital visits during the pandemic, and even reached out via NGOs to deliver medicines to people at their homes.