LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Winning regulator approval, the OraQuick test checks saliva from a mouth swab for HIV and can produce results in 20 to 40 minutes. This will end worrying and doubt for many Americans, as the U.S. government estimates suggest that while 1.2 million people in the U.S. are HIV-positive, 20 percent are unaware that they are positive.

The Food and Drug Administration says it hopes the over-the-counter test will reach people who might not otherwise get tested. OraQuick is expected to be sold in as many as 30,000 pharmacies and home-ware shops, as well as online.

Manufacturer OraSure, hasn't said how much the test will sell for, but confirmed it would cost less than $60.

"We expect all the major retail outlets to carry this product," chief executive Douglas Michels said.

OraSure is planning a "pretty massive effort" to market the test, Michels added.

In addition, approval of the test has been praised by HIV/Aids awareness groups.

"This test will allow anyone to empower themselves to know their HIV status when, how and with whom they want to," Tom Donohue, founding director of Who's Positive, told the Associated Press.

However . the FDA wishes to reiterate that the test may not be 100 percent accurate, and has stressed the need for additional testing by medical professionals to confirm the result.

In trials, the test was able to correctly detect HIV among people carrying the virus only 92 percent of the time, while being 99 percent accurate for negative results, identifying that someone does not carry the HIV virus.

Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the HIV unit at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says that people who receive negative results should take the test again after three months, as it can take weeks before antibodies to HIV appear.

Healthcare professionals have been using a version of the OraQuick test since 2002.

While HIV/ADIS has slipped off the radar for much of the nation, for the last two decades there have been about 50,000 new cases of HIV in the U.S. annually.

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