Most Americans with HIV don’t have virus under control

Only 28 percent of the 1.2 million Americans living with HIV have their virus under control with medications, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said today, MSNBC reported.

One problem is 20 percent of people with HIV don't know they are infected, the CDC explained in its latest report on HIV in America. Of those diagnosed, only about 40 percent are getting HIV medications regularly.

“The big picture is we could do a lot better than we’re doing today,” CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden told The Associated Press.

The news comes on the heels of recent studies that have proved that suppressing the virus through treatment with antiretroviral medications not only improves health but makes people with HIV less infectious, MSNBC reported.

More from GlobalPost: ARV: Treatment as prevention

The new research on antiretrovirals has "given us a second wind," Michael Saag, professor of medicine and director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Center for AIDS Research, told the Wall Street Journal. "Now it's not just education and promotion of safer sexual practices. We're really doubling down on identifying people in the community, getting them in treatment to the point where their viral load reaches undetectable levels and they won't transmit to anyone else."