NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- New York City recorded 70 percent fewer HIV diagnoses in 2019 than it did in 2001, health officials said Tuesday.
A total of 1,772 people were diagnosed with HIV in the five boroughs in 2019, marking a “historic low,” the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said in a release commemorating World AIDS Day, which falls on Dec. 1 each year.
That number represented an 8 percent drop from 2018, when 1,917 people in New York City were diagnosed with HIV, the release said.
The decline in new diagnoses was seen “among men, women and transgender New Yorkers, and among all age groups,” the release noted.
“New York City is a model in the global fight against HIV/AIDS,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement. “Years of hard work and determination [have] put us closer than ever to the day of zero diagnoses — something many believed unthinkable not so long ago.”
“With COVID-19, we are taking the same grassroots approach to fight back the virus, guaranteeing a recovery that makes our communities stronger than ever,” he added.
In his own statement, Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi said he believed the HIV epidemic could be eradicated “once and for all by eliminating stigma and discrimination as well as permanently ensuring health care as a human right.”
“The New York City experience will quite literally be a model for the nation,” he wrote. “What the movement to end HIV showed the world has become even more vital as we fight to end COVID-19.”