Porn production in Los Angeles was halted for a third time this year after a testing facility reported an adult performer was positive with HIV, an adult industry trade association said in a statement Friday.
Privacy was requested for a porn actor who tested positive for HIV during a mandatory screening last week, according to the Free Speech Coalition, an industry advocacy group.
“The performer deserves privacy and dignity at this difficult time,” the group said in a statement.
Three performers tested positive in September, leading the group to change testing requirements from every month to every two weeks.
“Going forward, we need to constantly look to both performers, producers and health care professionals to find ways to improve our protocols,” Diane Duke, the CEO of the group, said at the time.
The group said their safety measures are already in place, and that anyone looking to work in the adult film industry had to test clear of STIs within 14 days of their shoot.
If a performer tests positive and has worked on a film in the two weeks since their last test, a moratorium is immediately called and the industry “immediately halts all production," the group said.
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Production is stopped so anyone who has worked with the infected actor can be retested to check if they contracted the virus.
The moratorium comes after the group said last month that porn production has dropped 95 percent since Los Angeles County voters passed Measure B, which made condoms mandatory during local film production.
The group said after the latest moratorium that condoms could in some cases be more harmful than no protection.
"Condoms aren’t perfect. They break," the group said. "In the shoots that can take several hours, they can cause abrasions known as 'condom rash,' which, paradoxically, can make it easier to transmit an infection if one does break."
Measure B was aimed at preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases within the industry's actors.
