AIDS to Double in Next Year but Rate Is Slowing

As many as 500,000 to 1 million Americans may have been infected by the AIDS virus and more than 12,000 of them are expected to develop the deadly disease next year, federal health officials said today.

That many new cases of AIDS would represent a doubling of the current cumulative toll since 1981 in the United States.

A report from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said more than half of the new cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome are expected to come from states other than New York and California, the states now reporting the highest numbers of AIDS cases.

But Dr. Harold Jaffe, one of the six authors of the report, said the rate of increase in the number of AIDS cases is gradually slowing.

“A couple of years ago, the doubling time was every six months,” Jaffe said. “The last doubling occurred in about 10 months and we’re projecting the next doubling in about 12 months.”