Dear doctors, please help with the following questions

1. Can someone get HIV from going to a barber shop and using the same clipper to cut his hair assuming the barber just cut a HIV positive person with the clipper cut the HIV persons skin mistakenly with the clipper, didnt sterilize the clipper with alcohol and didnt change the clipper blades and used the same clipper to cut a new persons hair and also mistakenly cut the skin of the new person with the clipper?

2. If a newly infected HIV positive person is in the window period and tests HIV negative with blood tests (even though the person is actually positive but its too early to be detected by blood tests), can the person transmit HIV to someone else through sexual intercourse at this time?

1.  While some authorities suggest that improperly cleaned barbering tools may place a person at risk for acquisition of HIV or hepatitis, in truth this is extraordinarily rare, if it happens at all. For transmission to occur through barbering  the client immediately preceding you would need to have an untreated infection, very little (minutes) time could have passed since the previous person receive their haircut, and for both the preceding client and yourself there would need to be nicks or scrapes occur which transferred one persons blood to the next. I am unaware of any proven cases in which HIV has been transmitted from one person to another in the process of receiving a haircut.

2.  If a person is in the window between acquisition of HIV infection and having a positive combination HIV antigen/antibody (fourth generation) test become positive, the risk of HIV trans mission is virtually zero. There must be virus present for transmission to occur. Typically following acquisition of infection virus levels quickly become very high and are easily detected by VP 24 antigen test.

I hope these replies are helpful. I would have no concerns about acquisition of HIV either from receiving a haircut at the barber shop or if I had had direct contact with a person who had a -4th generation HIV test. EWH