The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) newly published 2006 HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report estimates that there were 52,878 new cases of HIV in 2006. This is a 49 percent increase over the 35,537 cases estimated for 2005, however, the increase is largely due to the fact that the CDC used data from seven additional states in 2006 compared with 2005. If you remove the states not included in the 2005 estimates from the 2006 estimates, the number of HIV cases drops to 34,878, a 2 percent decrease between 2005 and 2006.

The CDC derives its estimates from states that used a names-based HIV reporting system. In 2005 there were 38 such states, plus five dependent territories like Puerto Rico and Guam. In 2006, this increased to 45 states plus the dependent territories. This means that 6,581 HIV cases from California, 6,241 from Illinois, and 4,048 from Washington, DC, included in the 2006 estimates were counted as zero in the 2005 estimates.

Because so many states only adopted a names-based reporting system in 2006, it is not possible to say whether new HIV cases, as opposed to AIDS cases, have gone up, down or stayed the same in those states with new reporting systems over the last several years.

The CDC has, however, been tracking new HIV and AIDS cases reported in 33 states with name-based HIV reporting for a number of years. Those numbers have remained fairly stable since 2003, with just a slight increase in 2006—with 36,817 new HIV and AIDS cases reported—from 2005, with 35,634 cases reported.