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Fight against AIDS epidemic is getting harder everyday. Federal health officials recently reported a sharp increase in unprotected sex among American gay men.

In the duration of 2005 to 2011, there was a rise of 20 percent in people who told Centers of Disease Control and Prevention officials that they were having unprotected anal sex.

In the 2011 survey, unprotected sex was more than twice as common among men who said they did not know whether they were infected with H.I.V. reported NY Times. 

According to health officials, even going for a H.I.V. tests represents taking less risks, in spite of the results. However the most recent survey found that 30 per cent of men (who were interviewed) had not gone for a test previous year.

“The problem with sero-sorting is that it’s really easy to get it wrong,” Dr. Frieden said, according to NY Times. “When one-third of men aren’t even tested in the last year and a tenth of those who thought they were negative were actually positive, you don’t want to risk your life on a guess.”

Sero-sorting is a behavior where men who are uninfected with H.I.V. try to sleep only with men are also uninfected like them.

“Young guys are less worried,” said Alex Carballo-Diéguez, a researcher at the H.I.V. Center of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University in NY Times. Alex has been studying gay men’s behavior since the 1980s. “H.I.V. has become a chronic disease, and everyone knows some behaviors are bad for you, like smoking and trans fats. But in the moment of excitement, they’re going to do what they enjoy.”

The goal of the national AIDS strategy is to put the new AIDS infections down to 38,000 a year by 2015.