by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday revised its guidelines to track the genetic signatures of viruses collected from people recently diagnosed with HIV, a controversial practice used by state and local health departments to curb infections.
The updated policy encouraged health officials to be more transparent with their communities about tracking, one of many changes sought by HIV advocacy organizations concerned about how so-called molecular surveillance could violate the privacy and civil rights of people. patients.
But the agency stopped short of adopting more significant changes that some advocates had pushed for, such as allowing health agencies to opt out of states where people can be prosecuted for transmitting HIV.
“We are in a period where health data is increasingly being used in criminal prosecutions, as seen in the prosecutions of people seeking abortion services or who may have suffered a miscarriage,” said Carmel Shachar, a professor from Harvard Law School who specializes in health care. The revised policy did not go far enough, she said, to protect people with HIV.
Dr. Alexandra Oster, who leads the CDC’s molecular surveillance team, said the benefits of the program far outweigh the risks. “We need to get it right,” she said. “But we have to keep doing it.”
HIV has a distinctive genetic signature in each person that helps doctors decide which medications can prevent it. But the information can also be used to track its spread through a population, including identifying groups of people carrying closely related viruses.
The CDC has used molecular surveillance for decades to track flu, salmonella and, more recently, Covid.
In 2018, the CDC began to require Health departments that received federal funding for HIV programs will share data collected from people with the virus. Patients you don’t have to be informed have their viral samples traced.
Molecular surveillance has identified more than 500 HIV clusters in the country since 2016, the CDC said. Health officials can then interview people in the groups to identify their sexual partners or drug users and connect them with testing, needle exchanges and medications that block transmission.
