Eighty-nine more people in Hong Kong were tested positive for HIV antibody in the first quarter of 2006, bringing the cumulative reported HIV infections to 2,914 in the cosmopolis, Hong Kong health authority announced Tuesday.

Of the newly reported HIV cases, 58 percent were related to sexual contact, according to the Center for Health Protection under the Department of Health, which filed the statistics.

Sexual contact was mainly to blame for the 17 new cases of AIDS patients reported in the same quarter, said the center, as 76 percent of the new cases were related to sexual intercourse.

The newly reported AIDS cases has brought the total number of confirmed AIDS cases to 799 in Hong Kong, a city populated by about 7 million people.

Reviewing the AIDS situation in Hong Kong at a press conference Tuesday, the department's Senior Medical Officer Dr. Raymond Ho said the predominant route of HIV transmission in this quarter remain sexual contact.

"Of the 89 new HIV cases reported, 26 acquired the infection via heterosexual contact, 26 via homosexual or bisexual contact and eight cases of injection drug use," Ho said.

The routes of transmission of the remaining 29 cases were undetermined due to inadequate data.

Among the 89 new HIV cases, 70 were males.

Of the 2,914 cumulative cases of HIV infections since 1984, 76 percent acquired infection through sexual contact. Of them, 68 percent resulted from heterosexual transmission and 124 infections have occurred among injection drug users, according to the center.

(Xinhua News Agency May 24, 2006)