County Falls Short in Bid for AIDS Funding : Health: Despite an all-out effort to document new AIDS cases, San Diego remains about 100 cases short of the number needed to qualify for $5.6 million.

San Diego will need a numerical or congressional miracle to meet today’s cutoff for amassing enough AIDS cases to qualify for $5.6 million in federal AIDS funding, county officials said Thursday.

Doctors, clinics and social service agencies responded well during the last month to an intense effort to find unreported AIDS cases, but it just wasn’t enough, said the county’s public health officer, Dr. Donald Ramras.

The AIDS funding bill being considered in Congress would give $300 million to cities that have had at least 2,000 AIDS cases by today.

Federal figures show 13 cities already qualify, said county AIDS planner Steve Eldred, but San Diego was No. 14 at the end of February, 198 cases below the cutoff.

After screening 400 reports of possible additions from doctors and others, county AIDS officials found only 30 new cases, Ramras said. The rest had already been listed in county statistics.

Perhaps another 10 will emerge when county officials screen about 100 other potential case reports submitted during an intense effort this month to uncover them, Ramras said.

Added to the 50 cases that normally are diagnosed every month, that would raise the county’s total to 1,892--still not enough.

County lobbyists report that the bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., has not been receptive to San Diego’s suggestion that the cutoff date be extended to June 30, Eldred said.

The Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990 would set aside $600 million annually to fund care for low-income AIDS patients throughout the nation. Half would go to states to distribute to localities, and half would be distributed to cities with 2,000 or more AIDS cases.

It is this latter guaranteed money for which San Diego officials most want to qualify--particularly since the county often feels it gets less than its share when money is distributed by the state government in Sacramento.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor and county Supervisor Leon Williams are among those who have appealed to Kennedy for revisions in the AIDS bill, which could pass this year.

O’Connor has not yet received a response, a spokesman said. Williams returned from a visit to Washington pessimistic, Eldred said.

San Diego’s total of AIDS cases is the third largest in the state, but still well below the numbers in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Los Angeles has had about 8,500 cases and San Francisco about 7,000.