Draft banning HIV carriers from bathhouses studied

The Ministry of Health is studying public feedback on a draft regulation that bans people with HIV from entering bathhouses, the Beijing News reported a ministry official as saying on Tuesday.

The official told the Beijing News that the regulation is based on the potential harm to others from those with sexually transmitted diseases, infectious skin diseases or HIV/AIDS can pose.

The ministry will have experts review the feasibility of the regulation, and will scrap it if there is evidence that bathing in public baths does not transmit HIV, he said.

Though some experts reiterated that bathing does not transmit the virus, a survey covering more than 10,000 people conducted by Sina Weibo showed that 72.2 percent of people favor the regulation, while 21.8 percent oppose it.