HIV testing in one London borough: do testing initiatives outside of sexual health persist after initial incentivised period?

UK HIV testing figures focus on tests performed in sexual health services and emergency departments.1 We examine HIV testing trends across the London Borough of City and Hackney to assess the durability of non-traditional testing initiatives.

Key borough-wide interventions included hospital inpatient opt-out testing (2011), primary care incentives (2015), online testing (2018), Emergency Department opt-out blood tests (2018; expanded London-wide 2021) and Fast Track Cities GP HIV Champion (2024).2

Retrospective data from hospital laboratories and online providers are shown in figure 1. They demonstrate that the 28% increase in on-line tests 2020–2021 did not fully counteract the 76% drop in clinic-based testing. Primary care testing increased by 169% during the 2024 GP Champion intervention but fell by 6% immediately after the project ended. These findings highlight the importance of including tests from non-traditional settings in testing figures and suggest that HIV testing initiatives may be difficult…

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