Hi there,

Thanks for your question.

When assessing your risk it’s helpful to think of what kind of contact is occurring and what you are being exposed to. Different types of sexual contact can include; skin-to-skin contact, sharing of vaginal fluids, semen, rectal fluid or blood.

As you mentioned, it sounds like you had skin-to-skin contact only, in which case you would be at risk for syphilis, HPV (human papilloma virus) and HSV (herpes simplex virus). Here is a great chart that breaks down each STI with info on common symptoms, how each is passed and when to test for each. Click here for that. 

Syphilis can take up to 3 months to show up on a test (the window period), so you could return to get tested 3 months after this encounter to be certain however, a test after 8 weeks would be quite informative. In Canada, we do not routinely test for HPV. You can learn more about it here. And HSV is usually something that we test for when someone has symptoms; symptoms take 2-21 days (with an average of 6 days) to show up. 

HIV is a virus that is passed through blood, semen, vaginal fluid and rectal fluid during sex. You cannot get HIV from skin-to-skin contact. 

I hope this has helped. Please comment below to let us know or if you need further clarification. 

Health Nurse