Frank Diamond

While 55.9% of Americans are fully vaccinated and 64% of Americans have received at least 1 dose of a vaccine, only 31% of pregnant individuals have been fully vaccinated. The CDC urges health care providers to convince pregnant women to get vaccinated.

Pro: Health care professionals work around vulnerable patients, and in environments that might be contaminated by COVID-19. Con: Patients want to see their caregiver’s face.

A huge peer reviewed study in PLOS Medicine underscores just how much of a threat long COVID-19 presents: 1 in 3 survivors display symptoms of the disease 3 to 6 months after initial infection.

Joshua Nosanchuk, MD, Programs Chairperson for ID Week: “What the infection preventionists are doing I think is a true blessing for our community. And not always as well recognized as it should be…. I just want to say thank you to all the people that are doing this work.”

Infection preventionists across health care settings struggle with a myriad of problems during this pandemic. IPs at nursing homes have it particularly hard.

Rebecca Leach, MPH, BSN, RN, CIC: “[Compassion fatigue is] a hard topic for us because we’re not used to talking about this kind of thing in infection prevention. We’re very much focused on evidence-based care and standards. And so, this delves into a little bit of dealing with our emotions, right? And in health care, we don’t talk about that kind of thing.”

In a highly unusual move, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, overruled the agency’s panel of experts, saying that health care workers should get COVID-19 booster shots.

If children get vaccinated and no new variant emerges, new infections will drop from 134,000 a day now to about 9,000 a day by March, according to 1 scenario. Deaths would fall to about 100 a day.

The allocations are scheduled to begin next month, with initial awards totaling $885, of which $500 million will go to what the CDC calls “strike teams” that will focus on nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

CDC: “For most children and adults with symptomatic SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, infection, isolation, and precautions can be discontinued 10 days after symptom onset and after resolution of fever for at least 24 hours and improvement of other symptoms.”

The CDC’s Runa Gokhale, MD, MPH: “I think that there is a role for infection preventionists to play here, and they are a community that we’ve been trying to engage through some of our sepsis awareness and sepsis prevention efforts.”

Linda Spaulding, RB-BC, CIC: “The time to hold nursing homes accountable is not the time when everything’s falling apart, and they don’t know what to do, and there’s nobody there to guide them.”

The National Institutes of Health yesterday unveiled a $470 million study that it hopes will mine data from 30,000–40,000 people who suffer from long COVID. Right now, there are more questions than answers.

Vaccines work. They ward off severe illness and death. But they do not make health care workers invulnerable to breakthrough infections, according to a research letter in JAMA Open Network.

Researchers found the mu variant to be the most resistant variant to antibodies from either previous infection or from vaccines, a spot that had been previously occupied by the beta, or the South African, variant.

Investigators used acetone-washed, pre-autoclaved stainless-steel coupons coated with reformulated quaternary ammonium polymer to keep deadly pathogens at bay.

The pathogen can lurk on blankets, bed rails, trolley handles, sheets, door handles, light switches, bedside tables, bedside table drawers, curtains, sinks, food tables, curtains, normal saline stands.

The data seem to give credence to the government’s push to get more Americans vaccinated against COVID-19.

President Biden: “The bottom line: We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers.”

President Biden tonight plans to outline 6 steps that the US needs to take to—in the short term—stem the latest COVID-19 surge, and—long term—put this pandemic behind us for good.

COVID-19 cases occurring in children rose 26.8% from August 26 to September 2, according to new data.

As children head back to school, health care officials brace for a surge caused by Labor Day travel, and worry about unvaccinated teachers.

Questions that dog gain-of-function research relate to oversight of these potentially lethal projects and the secrecy surrounding them. Did such research cause COVID-19 to leak out of a laboratory in Wuhan, China?

In a study that has not yet been peer reviewed and had been done on mice, Japanese investigators pinpoint Delta variant mutations that might be able to evade COVID-19 vaccine antibodies.

CDC data cut to the heart of just how much protection COVID-19 vaccines offer infection preventionists (IPs) and other health care professionals on the frontlines from the delta variant.

Vaccines for children 5–12 who seem to be more vulnerable to the delta variant than earlier iterations of COVID-19 might come in the fall. Good news, but vaccines alone—for all age groups—represent only one layer of mitigation, some experts argue.

There needs to be a national standard for measuring the effectiveness of personal protective equipment at its most vulnerable spot—the wrist, urge CDC investigators.

Officials with the American Academy of Pediatrics stress that there’s no need for alarm but they do urge that more data be collected concerning children and COVID-19 infection, and they also note that there’s still no vaccine for youngsters 5–12.

US health officials unveiled a booster shot program this week that says that some people should get the shots 8 months after their last initial dose. Where did that number come from?

Only 40% of nursing home employees are vaccinated. Nursing home advocates counter that vaccine hesitancy exists in all health care settings, and if nursing home employees must get the vaccine, the same should apply to all health care workers in the United States.