Earnest Lacour, an Oklahoma City resident, was detained and charged with willfully infecting at least three women with HIV. The 30-year-old man is the suspected perpetrator; and based on information gathered by officials in OKC, Lacour was detected with the disease in 2019. Lacour is being imprisoned at the Oklahoma County Jail on three felony counts of contagious illness transmission.
According to police, they procured Lacour's medical documents, which proved he was infected with HIV in 2019. Lacour accompanied an HIV-positive lady to a doctor's appointment. One of his victims, who wished to stay anonymous, talked with OKC's Fox 25 and stated that while she is concealing her name, she wishes to speak out in the hopes of alerting others. She explained how the disease is fatal yet one can still enjoy life.
Early Symptoms of Victim's HIV
The victim stated that she developed a sexual connection involving Lacour in 2021. She said that she started to feel ill and lightheaded and would occasionally pass out. That's when she was determined to make an appointment with her doctor. She added how she had the early symptoms and described how she just fell out and faint and became so lightheaded that she'd have these incidents and puke up for weeks.
The sufferer was then given her life-changing diagnosis. Since evidence claimed to demonstrate that Lacour was knowledgeable of his situation at the time he as well as the victim were acquainted, police became concerned. The victim utilized social media to promote consciousness about Lacour, prompting more women to come forth with their tales.
Perhaps, one of Lacour's alleged victims claims she went to a doctor with him and discovered he was positive for HIV after he was given drugs the next day without having his blood tests done. Lacour has already been indicted with three felony charges of knowingly participating in HIV-transmission behavior. His victim claims that the diagnosis has harmed her mental health, as reported by Yahoo News.
The HIV Transmission Throughout USA
The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) affects around 1.2 million persons in the United States. Approximately 13% of them are unaware and require testing. HIV continues to disproportionately affect some communities, most notably racial and ethnic minorities, as well as homosexual, bisexual, and other males who have sex with men.
In the United States in 2019, an anticipated 34,800 new infections with HIV occurred. After a period of relative stability, new HIV infections fell 8% from 37,800 in 2015 to 34,800 in 2019. In 2020, 30,635 persons were diagnosed with HIV in the United States and six dependent countries, a 17% drop from the previous year, owing to the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on Hiv treatment, and testing, HIV transmissions are not spread uniformly among states and regions, as per HIV.gov.
The projected majority of additional HIV infections within a defined time (such as a year) differs from the number of people who are HIV-positive during that year. Several patients might well have had HIV for a long period yet be unaware of it, therefore the year they were detected may differ from the year they got HIV.
According to the most recent CDC estimates, around 34,800 new infections with HIV occurred across the country in 2019. Since the epidemic's peak in the mid-1980s, annual cases in the United States have decreased by more than two-thirds.
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