This year, the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) was held in a virtual format due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. In his virtual presentation, Denton Callander, PhD, of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, explained how community-level HIV viremia was associated with decreasing HIV incidence in a real-world example of the population-level impact of “treatment as prevention” in two large Australian states.
In this exclusive MedPage Today video, Callander explains how treatment as prevention at an individual level works well, although the big picture effects of this strategy are less clear — including whether public health outcomes follow the benefits for individuals.
Following is a transcript of his remarks:
Hi, my name is Denton Callander, and I am an HIV and sexual health researcher with the University of New South Wales. Earlier in March this year, I presented on behalf of my colleagues at the virtual CROI conference, which is normally held in Boston but was conducted online this year. And I shared with participants an analysis that my colleagues and I have been working on, really representing a project that’s been running for a number of years now that aims to investigate HIV treatment as prevention and its effects on HIV incidents. We’ve known of course for a number of years now that HIV treatment is really great for individual health and also between individuals it’s quite an effective prevention tool. So if you’re on treatment, you’re not going to pass on the virus.