It passes on through skin, most often around an outbreak.
Herpes passes from one person to another through skin-to-skin contact, when the virus is present on the skin of the person who carries it. That is most likely during an outbreak, and in the day or two before one — the prodrome, the tingling or warning signs some people get before anything shows.
It is not passed on by towels, toilet seats, cups, or swimming pools. The virus does not survive well away from the body. It is a contact virus, not an airborne or a surface one.
The part that surprises people most is that skin contact does not have to happen during a visible outbreak for the virus to pass on. That is the next thing to understand, because it is the reason honesty matters more than any single precaution.
The virus can be on the skin with nothing to see and nothing to feel.
Some of the time, the virus is present on the skin when there is no outbreak, no rash, and no warning at all. This is called asymptomatic shedding, and it happens to most people who carry the virus, on and off, without them knowing.
This is the honest core of the whole subject. It is why the risk of passing it on is never quite zero, even between outbreaks, and even for someone who has never had a symptom in their life. Anyone who tells you the risk can be taken to nothing is not being straight with you.
It is also why so many people carry a herpes virus without ever knowing where they got it. Shedding is quiet by nature. That is not a reason to be afraid of it — it is a reason to work with the facts rather than a false sense of all-clear.
Worth knowing. Shedding tends to happen more in the first year or two after a first infection and less as time goes on, though it never fully stops. The numbers below are about lowering that risk, not ending it.
Three levers, and none of them a guarantee.
Each of these brings the risk down. Used together, they bring it down more. What none of them does is remove it.
Avoiding contact during an outbreak and the prodrome. The risk is highest when the virus is most active. Not having skin contact in that window — from the first warning signs until the skin has fully healed — is the single biggest thing within your control. It lowers the risk a lot. It does not remove it, because of shedding between outbreaks.
Condoms. Condoms lower the risk of passing it on. They do not remove it, because they do not cover every area of skin that can carry the virus. They help, and they are worth using — as one part of the picture, not the whole of it.
Daily suppression. Taken every day, daily suppression lowers the risk of passing it on. It does not remove the risk either, and no honest brand can promise that it does. What it can do is bring the risk down and, for many people, make outbreaks less frequent at the same time. You can see how a daily plan works on the plans page.
Put those together — care around outbreaks, condoms, and daily suppression — and the risk is lower than any one of them alone. It is still not zero. Confidence here comes from knowing that plainly, not from pretending otherwise.
What the research actually found.
People who live with this arm themselves with numbers, and they are right to. Here are the ones worth knowing, with the study each comes from. They are averages across a trial population, not a prediction about you, and the floor is never zero.
| Situation | What the research found |
|---|---|
| Partner not taking daily suppression | 3.6% caught HSV-2 over 8 months |
| Partner taking daily suppression | 1.9% over the same 8 months — about half |
| Condoms, used consistently | 96% lower risk per act male→female, 65% female→male |
| Suppression, effect on symptomless shedding | 80–90% lower |
Where these come from, and who they describe. The first two rows are from a trial of 1,484 heterosexual, monogamous couples in which one partner had symptomatic genital HSV-2 and the other did not; the treated partner took valaciclovir 500 mg once daily for eight months (Corey et al., NEJM 2004). The condom and shedding figures are from the BASHH 2024 national guideline. None of this is your number: it depends on direction, frequency, site, how long since diagnosis, and more, and the trial population may look nothing like your situation. The point the table makes is not a decimal — it is that each precaution moves the risk down, and stacking them moves it down further, and the floor is never zero.
Confidence does not come from a guarantee that does not exist. It comes from knowing the facts and being able to say them plainly: this is common, it is manageable, the risk of passing it on can be lowered a great deal, and it cannot be taken to zero. That is enough to have the conversation — and the conversation is the next part.
Ready to talk it through with someone? How to tell a partner takes the facts on this page and turns them into words. New to all of this? Start with herpes explained.
A daily plan lowers the risk and reduces outbreaks. Here is what it costs.
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- Patel R et al. British Association of Sexual Health and HIV UK national guideline for the management of anogenital herpes, 2024. Int J STD AIDS. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Corey L et al. Once-daily valaciclovir to reduce the risk of transmission of genital herpes. N Engl J Med 2004;350:11–20. www.nejm.org
- World Health Organization. Herpes simplex virus (fact sheet), 2020 estimates. www.who.int
Last checked 10 August 2026. Read our editorial policy for how we source and review these pages.