At the United Nations High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS in 2016, countries pledged to increase the number of people living with HIV on treatment to 30 million by the end of 2020.

Treatment scale-up has been impressive, with more than twice the number of people on treatment than in 2010, but as of June 2020 there were only 26 million people on HIV treatment, 4 million short of the target for the end of 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic has played a role in slowing treatment scale-up in the past six months. The relative change in the number of people on treatment increased by an estimated 2.4% from January to mid-June 2020, compared with 4.8% between January and June 2019.