More than 1.1 million people aged 13 and older are living with diagnosed HIV in the United States. As of 2023, the CDC counted 1,132,739 people with diagnosed HIV across the U.S. and its territories. That number doesn’t include people who carry the virus but haven’t been tested, so the true total is higher. New infections have been declining, dropping 12% between 2018 and 2022, but tens of thousands of people still contract HIV each year.
New Infections and Diagnoses Each Year
In 2022, an estimated 31,800 new HIV infections occurred in the United States. That same year, 37,981 people received a formal HIV diagnosis (a higher number because some of those diagnosed were infected in earlier years). While those figures are still significant, they represent meaningful progress. The 12% decline in estimated infections from 2018 to 2022 reflects broader access to prevention tools like pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and earlier treatment for people already living with the virus.
Who Is Most Affected
HIV does not affect all communities equally. Black and Hispanic/Latino Americans bear a vastly disproportionate share of the epidemic. In 2022, Black Americans made up roughly 12% of the U.S. population but accounted for 37% of new HIV infections (about 11,900) and 38% of new diagnoses (14,553). Hispanic/Latino people represented 18% of the population but 33% of new infections (10,500) and 32% of new diagnoses (12,167). Together, these two groups accounted for about 70% of all estimated new infections that year.
White Americans, who make up 61% of the population, accounted for 24% of new infections, roughly 7,600 cases in 2022. These disparities are driven largely by differences in access to healthcare, testing, and prevention rather than by differences in individual behavior.
Where HIV Is Concentrated Geographically
The U.S. South carries a heavier HIV burden than any other region. In 2023, 46% of all people living with diagnosed HIV, about 519,000 individuals, resided in the South. The region also accounted for 51% of new diagnoses that year (20,188 cases) and had the highest diagnosis rate at 18.4 per 100,000 people, compared to the national average of 13.7.
The concentration in the South extends to outcomes as well. More than half (56%) of all HIV-related deaths in 2023 occurred in southern states. The highest death rates were in the District of Columbia (8.9 per 100,000 people with diagnosed HIV), followed by Georgia, Florida, Delaware, and Louisiana. Factors like Medicaid coverage gaps, fewer sexual health clinics, and higher rates of poverty all contribute to these geographic disparities.
Deaths From HIV Today
HIV is no longer the near-automatic death sentence it was in the 1980s and early 1990s, but it still kills. In 2024, 4,589 people in the U.S. died from HIV-related causes, a rate of 1.3 per 100,000 people. Most of these deaths occur among people who were diagnosed late, never started treatment, or fell out of care. With consistent treatment, a person diagnosed with HIV today can expect a near-normal lifespan.
Treatment and Viral Suppression
Modern antiretroviral therapy can reduce the amount of virus in a person’s blood to undetectable levels, a state called viral suppression. Someone who is virally suppressed cannot transmit HIV to sexual partners and faces far fewer health complications. The federal goal is to get 95% of people with diagnosed HIV to that point.
The reality falls short. In 2017, the baseline year for the federal Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative, only 63.1% of people with diagnosed HIV were virally suppressed. Progress since then has been incremental. The gap exists for a range of reasons: inconsistent access to healthcare, medication costs, housing instability, stigma, and mental health challenges that make staying on a daily medication regimen difficult.
The Federal Goal: Fewer Than 3,000 Cases a Year
The Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative, launched in 2019, set ambitious targets: reduce new infections by 75% by 2025 and by at least 90% by 2030. The ultimate aim is to bring new infections below 3,000 per year, which would prevent an estimated 250,000 total infections over the life of the program. Reaching that goal depends on expanding testing, connecting newly diagnosed people to treatment quickly, making PrEP widely available, and addressing the social and economic factors that keep certain communities at higher risk.
With roughly 31,800 new infections still occurring annually as of 2022, the 2025 target of a 75% reduction appears out of reach. But the tools to end the epidemic exist. The challenge is delivering them to the people and places that need them most.