An HIV test is used to determine if a person has HIV or not. The only way to know your HIV status is to get tested.
So why get tested regularly?
Getting an HIV test means you are doing everything you can to know your status; this is important for your health and the health of your sexual partners.
Find out early: Getting tested often means that if someone becomes HIV-positive, they’ll find out earlier. More than ever, science is telling us that early detection and treatment of HIV is really important. Getting connected to treatment as soon as possible is likely to make a very big difference on this virus’s ability to hurt your health and immune system.
Prevention: If a person doesn’t know they’re HIV-positive because they haven’t been tested, they’re much more likely to transmit HIV than an HIV-positive person who knows their status and is getting treatment
What if HIV testing was just part of your regular sexual health routine?
Whether or not your partner(s) has HIV, tests regularly, and no matter the type of sex you want to have with them, knowing your HIV status, and theirs, will help you make thoughtful decisions about the sex you have.
Many of us know that testing for HIV is an important way to take care of our health, but some of us are not getting tested or getting tested enough. So how often should you get tested?
Our checklist tool recommends a testing schedule, based specifically on you and your sexual activities.
Think about testing every 3 – 6 months if:
- you are having sex with multiple partners;
- someone you are having sex with has multiple sex partners
- you are (or might be) sharing drug-use equipment with other people
*You can ask yourself questions like ‘am I regularly using barrier protection’, ‘am I on PrEP’, and ‘are my sexual partners regularly getting tested’ to decide if you want to test more or less often in this range. You can also talk to a healthcare professional for advice on whether or not to get tested every 3 or 6 months.
Think about testing every year if:
- you are having sex with one person who, to the best of your knowledge, is only having sex with you
- your partner tested HIV-negative since after the last time they had sex with someone other then you, or is undetectable
- you do not share drug-use equipment with other people
Think about testing once in your lifetime if:
- you are not sexually active
- you do not share drug-use equipment with other people
If you think you may have been exposed to HIV and have symptoms like a rash, a fever or flu-like symptoms, get tested as soon as you are able to. It’s important to know that not everyone who gets HIV will experience these symptoms. In fact, most new cases of HIV are happening when one person doesn’t know that they have recently become HIV-positive. The chance of passing the virus along is at its highest in this early stage.
While you’re testing for HIV, it’s good to get tested for other STIs too. STIs increase the chance of passing on or getting HIV, so all people, both HIV-positive and negative, are recommended to test regularly for STIs like syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea. A great way to reduce STIs and HIV in our community is to test frequently and treat early. Check out our page testing in Nova Scotia for a guide on
How do you test for HIV? There are a few different kinds of HIV tests to know about:
Standard testing is when they take some blood from your arm and send it to a lab to get tested. The testing lab in Nova Scotia uses a test that is most accurate if the sample is taken 45 days (or later) after the exposure to the virus. In most cases, you will hear back with your results in 7 – 21 days.
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Take-home self-tests are rapid tests that can be done by yourself. They are a great option for people who prefer to test from home. Self tests involve a finger prick that you give yourself. These kits can be ordered anywhere in Nova Scotia through the STI Care Now initiative. If you get a positive (reactive) result on a self-test you must get a confirmatory standard test done. If you are looking to test anonymously, call your local sexual health centre or AIDS service organization to see if they offer them. It takes 3 months after HIV exposure for these tests to be at their most accurate.
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NOMINAL testing is the standard testing option in this province, and it means your blood sample that gets sent to the NS Health lab can be linked back to you through your name.
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NON-NOMINAL testing is when a doctor sends a sample to the lab with some other marker, such as a birthday, so that they can link it to your medical file at their office without sharing your identity with the lab.
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ANONYMOUS testing is when your identity is not tracked when you get tested. In Nova Scotia, the only way to get fully anonymous confirmatory testing (standard testing) is at the Halifax Sexual Health Centre or the Ally Centre of Cape Breton.
Going to get tested
Different people have different routines when it comes to where, and how often, they get tested for HIV. You can get a blood test requisition (the paperwork that lets you schedule your test at a blood collection clinic) for an HIV test at your family doctor, a walk-in clinic, an anonymous testing site, or other sexual health clinic.
It’s not unusual to feel nervous about getting an HIV test, especially if you’ve never done it before. If you’re worried about it, finding out you’re HIV-negative might be a relief. If it turns out you’re HIV-positive, it’s OK to be upset — but it’s also good for your health to find out as early as possible so you can get connected to care right away. Getting connected to care and treatment options is the best way to support your health in the long run and to achieve an undetectable HIV viral load.
If you are wondering where to get tested, check out our section Testing in Nova Scotia.
CHECK OUT OUR TESTING CHECKLIST TO LEARN ABOUT WHAT TESTING WE RECOMMEND DOING.
Once your blood test has been taken, they will give you instructions. Typically in Nova Scotia no news is good news (meaning if you don’t hear from them, your test didn’t show that you have HIV), but if you do test positive you can expect to hear back and they will help connect you to your treatment, and talk you through the next steps.
If you are diagnosed with HIV (or an STI) your local public health unit may follow up with a phone call to discuss it with you. They want to make sure that anyone who may have been exposed is aware of the exposure, so they may ask you if you are comfortable contacting them yourself, or if you would like them to do that on your behalf. This is standard practice and is an important way they try to reduce the transmission of HIV and STIs.
FAQ on HIV Testing
If you’re worried that you might have gotten HIV, get tested 3 weeks after when you think you might have gotten it and then again in three months. Learn more about getting tested if you’re not sure how. If you might have been exposed to HIV in the last 72 hours, have you heard about PEP? It can help prevent the virus from causing an infection but needs to be started as soon as possible.
If you don’t know a lot about how HIV works today, finding out someone you had sex with was HIV positive can be scary, but remember, if they were undetectable, they can’t pass it to you. And if you used a condom properly, you are very unlikely to have gotten it. If you’re someone who has a lot of anxiety around HIV, getting on PrEP is a great way to relieve that stress.
Worse case scenario, if you are HIV positive, today’s treatments can fully control the virus and you can still live a full healthy life
Trans, nonbinary, and gender diverse people, like anyone else, should think about whether they may be exposed to HIV. Consider if you are a part of sexual networks with higher HIV prevalence. It is always a good idea to get tested if you are unsure – especially as there are free and accessible self testing programs out there.
Many trans and nonbinary people have said they have felt uncomfortable going to clinics or talking with doctors. Some clinics try to be inclusive of trans and gender non-conforming people in their policies or even on their intake forms. But some doctors, nurses and staff still say inappropriate things, misgender people, make assumptions about trans bodies or what kind of sex they are having, or don’t offer the testing that they might offer to cis folks
These experiences may turn you off the idea of getting tested. Being explicit about your needs sometimes works, and sometimes doesn’t. You might want to give yourself a pep talk, bring a friend with you to stay with you during the test, and let the doctors know if it’s your first time, or consider testing with the HIV self tests at home. Check out this cartoon from the Community Based Research Centre for some tips on navigating doctors as a queer, trans, and/or nonbinary person.
You could also look into a program like STI Care Now, that minimizes contact with healthcare professionals if you are worried about how they might treat you.
Some trans and nonbinary folks find it helpful to combine HIV testing with bloodwork for hormone monitoring.
Yes! You can ask for these tests at the same time as your HIV test. This is especially important because if you’re HIV negative and you aren’t on PrEP, STIs can seriously increase your chance of acquiring HIV if you have condomless sex with a partner who isn’t undetectable. .
Check out our STIs page to learn more about what STIs you might want to think about getting tested for, and how to do these tests. Make sure you tell your doctor what kind of sex you had, whether you used condoms or if you or your partner(s) are on PrEP or have undetectable HIV viral loads, and whether you have any symptoms. Or, fill out our checklist form to get an anonymous customized list of recommended tests generated for you!
HIV testing is available in Nova Scotia as a part of healthcare. For people who have a health card, they can access these tests generally quite easily without paying. If you do not have health insurance, you can get an anonymous HIV test in Nova Scotia without health insurance or personal information from the Halifax Sexual Health clinic or Ally Centre of Cape Breton. The infectious disease clinic in Halifax offers testing to people without health cards. And as of spring 2026, STI Care Now accepts alternative forms of ID including status cards, work visas, student visas, drivers license, and military numbers.
If you want to purchase an HIV Self-T test they cost around $40 a test. Some sexual health centres give these tests out for free around the province.
Check out our testing in NS page to learn more about where to get these tests.
Current HIV tests are very accurate. The tests you are likely to encounter in Nova Scotia (self-tests and confirmatory tests from blood draws at a lab or clinic) are over 99% accurate.
That being said, there are some important things to consider when understanding when a test will be the most accurate.
There’s a “window period” between the moment HIV transmission happens and when it will show up on an HIV test. This is based on the level of virus in your body and antibodies to the virus that become detectable over time. It can take up to 3 months after somebody gets HIV for antibody tests to show a positive result. Talk about the window period with the person giving you the test, and check out our page types of tests to learn what tests have what window periods.
This window period is not a result of ‘bad’ HIV testing tools, but rather the way the virus infects a body and the limitations of all medical tests. If you think about COVID tests, we know that it is highly unlikely to get a positive test result an hour after COVID exposure. Generally these tests take 2-5 days (or longer) to detect the virus. All medical tests have different time periods before they can detect a virus, and so it is important to understand the window period of any virus or infection you are testing for.
Somebody who has HIV might not receive an HIV-positive result from a test if your body hasn’t yet produced enough of the virus or antibodies to be detected by tests available in Nova Scotia. That’s why we recommend routine testing, and testing again at the end of the window period after an exposure.
HIV tests are very accurate, and so-called “false positive” results are exceptionally rare. If you are concerned about an incorrect result, speak with your doctor or counselor doing your testing. If you get a positive result from a diagnostic test (like a self-test), you need to go in for a confirmatory test as soon as possible.
Yes. You can buy at-home HIV tests from Biolytical, or order them for free through the STI Care Now program . Check out our section on types of tests to learn more about self-testing.
This section was adapted, with permission, from The Sex You Want Website.
You can learn more about where we got this information from at: HSHC, NS Health, SUGAR Health, MyHealth Alberta, NCBI, FDA, Trans Pulse Project
*disclaimer: we do not necessarily endorse all of the information, content, or language used in these references.