Courtney Act, the Australian drag queen who finished second in Season 6 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, in his latest video explained what it means to be HIV undetectable.
He explains in the video that persons on gay social apps will sometimes mention that they’re undetectable or use different abbreviations to denote their undetectability like UVL, undetectable viral load; [+u], positive undetectable; and U=U, undetectable equals untransmittable.
“Undetectable means someone is living with HIV, they’re on treatment and they’ve suppressed the amount of HIV in their blood to very low levels. If an undetectable viral load can be maintained for six months, HIV is not transmitted to sexual partners, even if condoms aren’t being used,” Act explains.
Three separate studies, the 2015 HPTN 052 study, the 2016 PARTNER study and the 2017 Opposites Attract study all observed zero HIV transmissions to an HIV-negative partner when the partner with HIV had a durably undetectable viral load.
These studies followed approximately 3,000 male-female and male-male partners over many years while they didn’t use condoms. Over the course of the PARTNER and Opposites Attract studies, couples reported engaging in more than 74,000 condomless episodes of vaginal or anal intercourse, according to the Gay Male Journal, an online resource for gay men’s health.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control supports these studies. In a Sept. 27, 2017, statement, the CDD said, “People who take ART (anti-retroviral therapies) daily as prescribed and achieve and maintain an undetectable viral load have effectively no risk of sexually transmitting the virus to an HIV-negative partner.”
Since that statement, over 600 other organizations from 75 countries, including numerous HIV health organizations, major scientific organizations and HIV doctors around the world have all literally signed onto this fact.
And in November, Hornet became the first gay social network to support the international Undetectable = Untransmittable campaign (U=U), which combats HIV stigma by raising awareness that an undetectable viral load means HIV is untransmittable.
Act also stated that undetectable doesn’t provide protection against sexually transmitted infections like syphilis or gonorrhea, so sexual partners should still be responsible for their own sexual health, get regularly tested and choose whether to use condoms.
