Q&A: Dealing with COVID the Chameleon
November 10th 2020Fibi Attia, MD, MPH, CIC: “There is a daily meeting where we talk about the possibility of getting those COVID vaccines and where are we going to store them. How are we going to distribute them? How many doses do we need? Those kinds of things are being discussed on a daily basis.”
Viewpoint: Quackery Might Stall Progress Against COVID-19
November 6th 2020The worst-case scenario is that if an effective and safe COVID-19 vaccine is found, a large segment of our population will elect to use hydroxychloroquine or another ineffective treatment instead, allowing the virus to continue to thrive, and devastate our nation.
Q&A: Healthcare Workers Coming Down With COVID
November 4th 2020Linda Spaulding: “Infection preventionists, put your tennis shoes on because over the next two months, we’re predicting to see a huge increase.... We have all the holidays coming up. You’re going to have cases from those. Hospitals have to be prepared.”
Q&A: Stamp Personal Protective Equipment with ‘Made in America’
November 3rd 2020Ashish Diwanji: “The personal protective equipment made and sold in the US has to abide by the standards set up by NIOSH …. The PPE made and sold from China do adhere to the Chinese standards, but their standards are different than ours.”
Revisiting the ‘Powder Keg’ of COVID’s First Days
October 30th 2020“[T]here is a need for early education to enforce correct PPE use to alleviate personal risk concerns. This includes re-education of the donning and doffing of PPE to confirm staff are effectively protecting themselves. Data suggests substantial self-contamination risk occurs when doffing PPE….”
COVID Vaccine: What Infection Preventionists Need to Know
October 30th 2020Kevin Kavanagh, MD: “Infection preventionists will need to make sure that they still have access to adequate PPE, even if the vaccine comes out [and they] really need to look at the experimental group that was used for the EUA.”
Q&A: CDC Wants to Help Infection Preventionists
October 29th 2020Michael Bell, MD: “The challenge that infection control professionals face has grown tremendously. We’re asking these individuals to not only be experts, but also to take responsibility for such a wide range of activities ... and finding ways to help them accomplish what they’re doing across the whole population of healthcare personnel is the rationale behind Project Firstline.”
CDC Launches $180M Anti-infection Program for Healthcare Workers
October 28th 2020CDC’s Jay Butler, MD: “It is critical that every healthcare worker in the United States has the training, information, and resources they need to protect themselves, their patients, colleagues, families, and communities from infections, and Project Firstline is designed to meet that need.”
Q&A: What Infection Preventionists Learned from COVID
October 28th 2020Sharon Ward-Fore, MS, MT(ASCP), CIC: “I’m hoping that healthcare facilities will find the value in their infection preventionists and understand how important a role they play as far as training on PPE and disinfectants, and in hand hygiene, being kind of a boots on the ground people on the floor to see things firsthand.”
Q&A: Operating Room Airflow Moots COVID Social Distancing
October 28th 2020Franklin Dexter, MD: “I would recommend to those people working in different surgical suites to recognize that within an operating room, you shouldn’t assume that stepping away from the patient would put you in reduce risk. You should think about what the airflow is in the operating room.”
Fauci: Wear a Mask Even When COVID Vaccine Comes
October 26th 2020Fauci: “While results of phase 3 trials for multiple candidate vaccines are on the near horizon, ‘low-tech’ tools to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2 are essential, and it must be emphasized that these interventions will still be needed after a vaccine is initially available.”
Q&A: Teaching Vascular Access Nursing on the Run
October 26th 2020Maya Gossman, RN: “Our infection preventionist has trained me in the past with the PPE use and the infection prevention measures. And so, I’m passing that on—the knowledge that she’s given me—I’m passing that on at this point to my vascular nurse trainees, my orientees.”
FDA Panel Reviews Many Challenges Facing a COVID Vaccine
October 25th 2020By their nature, challenge trials have to be performed in young healthy individuals. SARS-CoV-2 is most lethal in the elderly and those with co-morbidities. Thus, an effective vaccine may be found for the young, but not in the elderly with an aging immune system.
Q&A: The Old Normal Will Return (in January 2022)
October 23rd 2020Monica Gandhi MD, MPH: “We will get to the end of this [COVID-19]. We will get to a combination of vaccine and natural infection, enough people getting herd immunity that this will stop. This will stop and we will get back to normal.”
Teaching Infection Prevention Teachers to Teach
October 23rd 2020The education of IPs has become a topic of interest since the onset of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The novel coronavirus highlighted that there perhaps are not enough IPs, and that’s especially true since their knowledge is being sought by schools, businesses and other non-healthcare settings.
Not Thinking Outside the ‘Red Box’ Endangers Patients
October 22nd 2020When healthcare workers using the red box stepped into the patients’ rooms, there was “significantly increased non-compliance” with PPE and hand hygiene protocols compared to those healthcare workers who went into rooms without red boxes.
Just What the Flu Costs the Healthcare System
October 22nd 2020Investigators found that the mean healthcare cost for treating elderly influenza patients per patient per flu season ranged from $3,299 to $12,398 higher than the costs for treating patients with congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary artery disease, and stage 5 renal disease.