Bermuda is growing.

According to Health Department statistics for March, the latest released to date, three people of the six new cases reported were infected by a partner of the opposite sex.

This has brought the number of such cases to 43 out of the 221 people known to be infected in Bermuda.

Most of the 221 are males in the 30-to-39 age group.

Intravenous drug users still make up the largest group of reported cases -- 107 or 48.4 percent. Sixty people contracted the AIDS virus through homosexual/bisexual relations, 43 through heterosexual, and 11 through other means.

The disease has claimed 181 lives since Bermuda's first AIDS-related death in 1982.