COVID-19

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending September 16.

With COVID-19 beginning to surge, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center needed to create a response unit from what had been an inpatient nursing unit. A recent study explains how this conversion was effective and can stand as an example for other facilities.

Investigators have learned invaluable lessons from 2 and a half years of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly on human immunity. Is natural infection better for long-term protection against COVID-19 or is vaccination? What does the data say?

Ambassador Deborah Birx, MD, believes not enough is doing to prepare for future pandemics. What are her recommendations? Find out in this final installment of her interview with Infection Control Today.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending September 9.

How much information should the public have about infectious diseases? Can the public handle the truth? If the correct information is not given out, will the public believe the medical leaders when another serious disease threatens the public’s health? Ambassador Deborah Birx, MD, continues her discussion with ICT.

CDC’s Medical Advisor for the Healthcare Safety Network, Raymund Dantes, MD, MPH, reviews sepsis and what infection preventionists, epidemiologists, and other health care workers need to know.

Long-term care facilities were once normally happier places, but COVID-19 changed the individuals working and living there. PPEs, testing, overwork, underpayment, and too many isolations have chased health care workers away and forced the facilities' population to plummet. Can anything be done?

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending September 2.

Starting September first, the first of the autumn boosters began to be available, but individuals may be concerned about their efficacy and safety. Infection Control Today® looks at the data.

Despite the gap of the current and desired rate of COVID-19 vaccinations of pregnant individuals, the systematic review and meta-analysis of 10 observational studies show the vaccines are safe and effective.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending August 19.

Ambassador Deborah Birx, MD, told Infection Control Today® exclusively, “Every mistake that we made with COVID-19 in January and February of 2020, repeated in real time with monkeypox.”

Ambassador Deborah Birx said in an exclusive interview with ICT® that there are “extraordinary structural barriers in the US to access” medical care. Individuals may have insurance, but they cannot access care.

Last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxed recommendations which neither control or prevent a rapidly evolving and disabling disease, COVID-19. However, we must maintain effective efforts to control spread of the virus.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending August 12.

Ambassador Deborah Birx, MD, infectious disease expert, and a former director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH, weigh in on that agency's significantly changed quarantine and distancing guidelines.

It is apparent we cannot simply vaccinate our way back to normal. We must also encourage the public to adopt public health strategies, including the wearing of N95 masks, avoiding close contact with strangers, and improved indoor ventilation. Now, more than ever, infection preventionists are needed to turn this tide around.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending August 5.

With stress and burnout from staff shortages and the COVID-19 pandemic, infection prevention auditors need to remember kindness and compassion.

The 16th annual conference will highlight speakers from around the globe, offer continuing education credits, and will be held as a webinar on September 14, 2022.

Adding staff is not the cure-all the CMS hopes it is. Higher wages and better government financial assistance would help, but fixing the system is not going to be easy.

Standardizing disinfectant wipes across multiple facilities requires comparing active ingredients, kill claims, and dwell times.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending July 29.

Despite the lessons learned from SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, monkeypox is still spreading worldwide, and those lessons do not seem to be halting its progress. The WHO hopes to change that.

COVID-19, and the emotional and physical toll it caused, reached all corners of the globe. At a nursing home in Hawaii, the staff describes how the pandemic has affected them.

With the World Health Organization declaring monkeypox a global emergency, Infection Control Today® looks at what lessons SARS-CoV-2 gave but were not followed, and what could be next.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending July 22.

Environmental sources of pathogen organisms can sometimes be difficult to narrow down in a health care facility. One possible source of transmission is the laundry used, and not maintaining strict cleanliness attention can put both patients and workers at risk.

Infection preventionists are not alone, despite how the COVID-19 pandemic has often made them feel. They are one point of the patient's triad--and the bonds within the triad are vital for the patient's outcome.