More than 56,000 in U.S. infected with AIDS each year

AIDS activist groups said the numbers showed the United States is doing too little to control the epidemic.

"We need to develop programs that specifically target those most at risk, such as African Americans, Hispanics, and men who have sex with men," Kevin Robert Frost, chief executive officer of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, said in a statement.

"The reality is that it is a wake-up call for all of us," Fenton agreed. "There are things that you and I can do to stop the disease -- encourage others to use condoms consistently and correctly, abstain from sex."

Fears of being stigmatized have discouraged people from being tested -- 25 percent of those infected do not know it and can pass along the virus.

AIDS groups have been clamoring for the CDC to release its numbers, but Fenton said the CDC's numbers have been undergoing peer review -- a months-long process during which both the statistical methods and the numbers themselves have been scrutinized by experts recruited by the journal's editors.

"This improved estimate means little if it does not serve as the spark to inflame our collective anger about the deadly neglect of an acute emergency," Mark McLaurin of the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project said in a statement.

"This week, President Bush signed a new global AIDS bill, but persistent underfunding and restrictions here at home tie our hands in combating the epidemic in our own backyard."

The president's Emergency Plan for HIV/AIDS Relief or PEPFAR program signed into law this week is a $48 billion, five-year package to help treat and prevent AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria around the world.

Globally, 33 million people are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS and 2 million die of it each year.