North Carolina had an estimated 2,200 people newly infected with HIV/AIDS in 2006, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The estimate provides a clearer picture of the HIV/AIDS epidemic by getting a better estimate of additional cases among people who had the virus but had not yet been tested.

Carol Schriber, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health and Human Services, said the new estimate relied on additional lab tests that North Carolina and 21 other state health departments helped establish, plus a complex statistical model to get a better snapshot of HIV/AIDS infections -- even among people whose HIV infections were not yet discovered.

"We didn't have an estimate for new AIDS cases before," Schriber said.

A state epidemiological survey put the number of new infections in 2006 at 1,247 cases, so the new method adds 953 cases of infection that are likely to have occurred among people who had not yet been tested.

The estimate of new HIV infections, combined with existing HIV/AIDS surveillance data, will enable public health officials to better understand where HIV is hitting hardest and how to focus prevention efforts.

"We know that science-based prevention interventions and testing work to help to prevent the spread of HIV," Evelyn Foust, head of the state's Communicable Disease Branch, said in a prepared statement. "However, our prevention efforts must be adequately funded and vigorously applied, and newly diagnosed individuals must get into care and treatment."

The CDC's new method of calculating infections indicates that nationally, approximately 56,300 people became infected with HIV in 2006.