Variability in Human Immunodeficiency Virus infection screening: impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract

Introduction: Due to potential disruptions in HIV care services caused by COVID-19, this study aimed to evaluate the variability in HIV screening between 2019 and 2022 among adults hospitalized in the general ward of a tertiary care hospital in Santa Fe.

Materials and methods: This ambispective and observational study evaluated the request for HIV serologic screening in patients selected through randomized sampling at a 2:1 ratio from October to December of the years 2019 to 2022. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020 was compared to 2019, followed by the impact of an institutional intervention aimed at increasing the rate of HIV screening requests.

Results: A total of 995 subjects were included. HIV screening was requested for 47.4% (n=472) of them, with a positivity rate of 1.7% (n=8). In 2020, HIV screening decreased compared to 2019 (34% vs. 43.9%, p<0.001), and increased to 84.2% in 2022 (p<0.001). In the multivariate analysis, the odds of HIV screening decreased with age (OR 0.986), while hospital admission in 2019 and 2022 (OR 1.48 y 9.76, respectively) increased it.

Discussion: The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the already low rate of HIV screening requests, which was also influenced by the age of the subjects. However, through institutional guidelines, this situation was successfully reversed in 2022.