A Twice-a-Year Shot to Prevent HIV Is Now Approved in Canada

For years, preventing HIV meant remembering a pill every day. As of this month, there's an option that asks for two appointments a year.

Health Canada has approved lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injection that prevents HIV. In Canada it's sold as Yeytuo. (It's called Yeztugo in the US, where the FDA approved it last June.) It's the longest-acting HIV prevention tool approved here: two small injections under the skin, six months apart, and that's the regimen.

What got it approved is how well it worked in the trials.

What the trials showed

Lenacapavir was tested in two large phase 3 trials, both published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Science named it Breakthrough of the Year in 2024.

The first trial enrolled more than 5,000 adolescent girls and young women in South Africa and Uganda. Not one person who received lenacapavir acquired HIV. Zero infections among the 2,134 people in that group.

The second trial enrolled over 3,200 cisgender men, transgender women, transgender men, and nonbinary people across several countries. There were 2 infections among the 2,183 people on lenacapavir, against a much higher rate expected without prevention. That came to about a 96% reduction...