Hot Line Overrun by Calls on AIDS : Health: Requests for testing and information leap by 600% after Magic Johnson’s announcement that he has the virus.

Callers asking to be tested for AIDS swamped the switchboards at the Ventura County health department on Friday, the day after Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Earvin (Magic) Johnson announced his AIDS-related retirement.

Calls to the county-operated AIDS hot line increased by 600% Thursday and Friday, county AIDS Coordinator Diane Seyl said.

“The clinic is overwhelmed with a number of calls they’re getting for HIV testing, and we’ve gotten a lot of calls for information on AIDS,” Seyl said. “It started yesterday afternoon and has been nonstop ever since.”

Seyl said the health department’s four clinics--one each in Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Paula and Simi Valley--have not had as many AIDS-related calls since Rock Hudson announced in July, 1985, that he was infected with the incurable disease, which killed him three months later.

The county has been testing about 100 people a month--a rate that soared to far more than 200 a month in the six months after Hudson’s announcement that he was suffering from acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

The county’s Public Health Services department and its drug and alcohol programs all offer free, confidential testing for the human immunodeficiency virus to anyone who asks, Seyl said. HIV is the microorganism that most experts believe causes AIDS.

Those who ask to be tested are given an appointment with a county nurse within a few days and are guaranteed anonymity, she said.

The person being tested gives only a code number to the nurse, who then counsels him or her on how the test works and draws a small amount of blood, about 10 cubic centimeters, Seyl said.

Two weeks later, the person can obtain the results of the test by giving his or her identification number or first name to a nurse, who then can explain the results of the test, Seyl said. About 1% of the HIV tests to date have come back positive, she said.

Seyl said that 185 Ventura County residents have died of AIDS in recent years, after their bodies’ immune systems failed to hold off fatal illnesses such as Kaposi’s sarcoma or Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia.

County health officials believe that at least 2,800 others are carrying the virus but showing no symptoms, she said.

Johnson’s announcement struck a nerve among Ventura County residents who might not have otherwise sought testing information, said Reese Welsh, director of AIDS Care, Inc., an organization that provides non-medical care for AIDS patients.

“They feel awakened by the Magic Johnson story,” he said. “When all of a sudden one of them comes down with this problem, people assume . . . that if the biggest, the strongest and the fastest of us can get it, then all of us can get it.”

Some callers have asked to be retested even though they tested negative for HIV in the past and have not engaged in risky behavior--such as intravenous drug use or sex without a condom--since the earlier test, Welsh said.

The Ventura County health department telephone numbers to arrange an appointment for a free, confidential HIV test are 652-5928 in Ventura, 385-8647 in Oxnard, 933-8450 in Santa Paula and 584-4887 in Simi Valley.

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