I am female, living in western europe. I had an unprotected sexual encounter in october 2019 (one night stand, I don't know the guy and I'm very grateful I didn't get pregnant). This is very unusual for me since i am normally very cautious, but i got pretty drunk that night. So to be clear, my exposure was more than 2 years ago. I regretted this moment ever since it happened. I was really scared to get tested for HIV. I finally got the courage to get tested on March 7 2022. I was tested for hiv with a HIV antibody-only test. I know for sure the test was a HIV antibody-only test. I don't know which technique the lab used (ELISA, Cmia, eclia,..). The result of my HIV antibody test: negative! When I saw my doctor for my results, she showed me my lab report and then asked me if I was sick at the time of my HIV test or if I had diarrhea or something at the time of my HIV test. I told her that I wasn't sick that I know of. Apparently, my crp level was pretty high and that's why she asked. Also, the test for wbc count and stuff didn't work, so there were no other results on the lab report (so the only results were the negative result for HIV and a high level of crp). 

At the time, I didn't think to much about it. But now I'm scared that maybe I had SARS-CoV-2/covid-19 (without symptoms or with very few symptoms), while I got tested for HIV with the HIV antibody test (I don't know what the right terminology is, SARS-CoV-2/coronavirus/covid-19, I'm going to use SARS-CoV-2). I did take a SARS-CoV-2 antigen self test at home, right before I went to my doctor for my HIV test. The SARS-CoV-2 antigen test was negative. The doctor didn't test me with a SARS-CoV-2 pcr test. I don't know which SARS-CoV-2 variant was dominant at the time of my HIV test in my area in Europe. By the time of my HIV test (march 7, 2022) I was vaccinated three times against SARS-CoV-2 (third vaccination was on December 29, 2021)

The bottom line is that you definitely "can be 100% that [you] don't have HIV". 

The main thing is that the antibody-only tests are 100% reliable when done any time more than ~8 weeks after the last possible exposure to HIV. The only difference between the current antibody tests and antigen-antibody (AgAb, "4th generation") is in detection of early infection:  the AgAb tests are conclusive after 6 weeks instead of 8 weeks. Your negative result 2+ years after your unprotected sexual encounter is entirely reliable. There are no medical conditions or medications that alter the reliability of the HIV blood tests, including COVID-19 or vaccination for it. Those aspects did not affect your HIV test result, and neither did your elevated CRP, whatever its cause.

I'll also point out that you really were not at much risk to start. Statistically, it probably is unlikely your partner had HIV. If he also is Western European, has sex only with women, and doesn't use drugs by injection, there's probably under one chance in a thousand he had HIV. And when a male is infected with HIV, the average transmission risk to a female partner is around once for every 1,000 unprotected vaginal sex events. Combining those statistics, the chance you caught HIV probably was somewhere around one in a million.

In any case, whatever the risk at the time, you do not have HIV. Please don't give it another thought. The only other consideration might be other STIs. Were you tested for gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis? If not, I would recommend it:  the chance you have any of these is low but not zero; better safe than sorry! These are not likely causes of elevated CRP, but it's not impossible.

I hope these comments are helpful. Let me know if anything isn't clear.

HHH, MD

Before i posted i scoured other posts on the site that mentioned covid and such. I saw in one of them that you said that the near universal consensus among HIV professionals is that hiv testing is completely reliable in people with covid-19 of people with SARS-CoV-2. I was wondering if that also applied to the HIV antibody only tests and if it was still true. Like i read in other posts, you and dr. Hook share the same views so i assume he would have given me the same answer as you did?

Thank you so much

And yes, you can be completely certain Dr. Hook's assessment and reply would not be different than mine.

Glad to hear you were tested (and presumably negative) for other STDs.

Thanks for the thanks!