Was there contact tracing during the HIV epidemic? I thought not!
Of course there was contact tracing for HIV, just as there has been for tuberculosis and syphilis. GIven that there were criminal laws regarding gay behavior in the early days it was more difficult to trace than more recently when in addition to the change in many laws, there is also successful long term treatment. One of the ways that S. Korea achieved rapid results was with aggressive contact tracing. When I Googled contact tracing for HIV, there were a lot of articles. Below is one sample:
https://www.aclu.org/news/hiv/contact-tracing-and-covid-19-lessons-from-hiv/