Herpes Prevention

Once you know you have genital herpes, you can easily help protect anyone you have sex with against catching the virus.

Using condoms can help prevent the passing on of most STIs, so it’s a good idea to use them with anyone except long-term partners anyway. Don’t think of them as the total solution, though: they don’t cut out all risk, so you need to take other precautions as well.

Avoid sex whenever you have herpes symptoms. Although you don’t have to have symptoms for the virus to be active, when you do have them the virus is always on the surface and likely to infect others.

Talk to your doctor about using daily antiviral therapy to suppress the activity of the virus. As long as you are taking the tablets every day and having safe sex, you should be much less likely to pass herpes on.