New tests reveal most of Britain HIV-positive

The spread of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the United Kingdom is far wider than had previously been suspected, according to new tests carried out on the entire UK population over the past few months.

Under the old system, people who wished to be tested had to have extensive blood screening to determine whether they had contracted the virus. But in July this year, this system was dismissed as too expensive. Critics also said that it reached too few people.

The new system, which has it scientific basis in the school playgrounds of the 1980s, is simpler, cheaper and can test more people more quickly. Testers have simply asked everyone "Have you got HIV?" and if they received the answer "No", proffer the trickier question "Are you positive?"

Just under 0.1 per cent of the population answered "Yes" to the first question. This was the figure that had been produced by the outdated blood tests. But, shockingly, 66.5 per cent answered "Yes" to the second question, indicating that they were in fact HIV-positive, and had either initially sought to mislead the questionner or had been confused by the first question.

A further 21 per cent answered "No" to the second question, demonstrating that they were not sure if they were HIV-positive. Given the new statistics, it seems likely that many of these indeed carry the virus. The remaining 13.6 per cent refused to answer the question, leading the testers to "strongly suspect" that they were HIV-positive.

Overall, the new figures indicate that at least 80 per cent of people in the UK carry the HIV virus with just one per cent of them are officially acknowledged — bringing the UK in line with South Africa, Angola, Mozambique and Burma. A government spokesman confirmed however that there were currently no plans to pretend the virus doesn't exist.