I have a question regarding HIV transmission. Thank you in advance for your response.
I'm asian and going to a barber shop for a hair cut every 4 weeks. The shop has a service I'm sure most of you never heard of, that is ear wax removal. Alot of asian males who come in to have hair cuts and have the service. At one time I have a scab in one ear due to previous use of cotton swab. I had the service few days after. The barber used a aluminum tool (several inches long), thin but not sharp that can easily penetrate the skin, which has a flat head few milimeters long, carefully tried to create small breaks of the build-up layer in the ear that has the scab, before he would use another tool to peel a portion of the build-up from the breaks. One porting at a time. In the first few seconds, the tool touched the scab and caused "some/little" bleeding as he put ir. He stopped right away and told me about that. He went on the other ear.
Questions:
1. Can HIV transmit that way saying the tool has no visible blood?
2. And say if the tool has some blood on it from the previous customer (about 10-15 mins each session) and the barber only wipes the tool with a cleanex?
3. And what if he did not wipe or disinfect the tool, just sat it down and used it again 10-15 mins later?
He told me later that it's rare that the service would cause bleedings.
What kind of a risk in each scenario? Is testing necessary?
Thank you very much and sorry for a long one.