11. What is the incidence of chronic HBV in the US?

Okay, let’s come to America. We have somewhere between 1.25 and 1.3 million chronically infected people. Half of all the carriers in the United States belong to either the Asian and Pacific Islander population or they’re African immigrants recent African immigrants, not the African American population that’s been here for generations. The overall prevalence of hepatitis B carriers in the general United States population is three per thousand or three tenths of a percent. But in the Asian and Pacific Islander population and among African immigrants, the prevalence is anywhere between five and fifteen percent. So, there’s a real skewing of who is most likely to be chronically infected.