The Infection Control Today® COVID-19 page brings readers the latest information and clinical updates on the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, from case counts and hospitalization rates to data on effective treatments for severe disease and the circulating viral variants.
November 13th 2024
A 3-D approach to infection control involves air and surface cleaning, leveraging monitoring, purification, and modeling technologies to reduce respiratory infection risks in health care environments.
Q&A: COVID Presents Unique Challenges to NICUs
July 23rd 2020Jenny Hayes, MSN, RN, CIC: “Asking the patient to wear a mask, which is something that we do in our facility, can be challenging at that point, especially as labor progresses, and you’re to the point of pushing. That right there offers a set of unique challenges for both the patient and the staff in the room.”
US Government Buying 100 Million Doses of COVID-19 Vaccine
July 22nd 2020The U.S. government will pay Pfizer and BioNTech $1.95 billion upon the receipt of the first 100 million doses, following US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorization or approval. The U.S. government also can acquire up to an additional 500 million doses.
What Happened When COVID-19 Visited A Hair Salon
July 22nd 2020We have much work to do in terms of risk communication and awareness. This is a good example of how quickly exposures can happen in the workplace when we focus only on employee-to-customer interactions or healthcare worker-to-patient interactions.
National Reporting System for All Dangerous Pathogens Needed
July 20th 2020After decades of reluctance to implement a national reporting system, when COVID-19 came along we witnessed almost overnight the formulation of case definitions and comprehensive national reporting from all healthcare facilities.
Q&A: Bridge Gap Between Infection Preventionists and EVS Teams
July 16th 2020Charles Gerba, PhD: “I really think that in the future, what you really need is a specialist in infection control who understands both the environmental health services and also the professional staff that deals with the patients.”
COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate Induces Immune Response in All Phase 1 Participants
July 15th 2020New findings show the vaccine candidate mRNA-1273, encoded with a stabilized prefusion SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, induced anti-SARS-CoV-2 immune responses in all of the trial’s participants, without any trial-limiting safety concerns identified.
Q&A: Nearly All Healthcare Workers Fighting COVID-19 Need N95s
July 14th 2020Harry Peled, MD: “I think for administrators and infection control people, the attitude has to be there is enough evidence that the wearing of N95s should be official. The claim that we’re going to wait for perfect evidence is just not tenable. We don’t do that for anything else in medicine.”
Q&A: No Guarantee Healthcare Workers Will Take a COVID-19 Vaccine
July 14th 2020Mary Jean Ricci, MSN, RNBC: “There’s also the question of how do we encourage staff to get the vaccination, if there is a vaccination, for COVID-19? Currently, we have employees in facilities caring for patients who do not get the flu vaccine and don’t have a medical reason for not doing it…. I think that that’s a big area where infection control practitioners are going to have to focus their energy to encourage receiving the vaccination when this is over.”
Healthcare Workers Stricken by COVID Fight for Compensation Benefits
July 13th 2020Up until now, the workers had to prove convincingly that they became infected on the job. But 16 states are now considering putting the onus on the hospital: Make it prove that the worker didn’t get the disease on the job.
Q&A: Pool Testing Needed to Slow COVID-19’s Advance
July 6th 2020Kevin Kavanagh, MD, the founder of the patient advocaty group Health Watch USAsm, has been sounding the alarm about coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) from the beginning. He tells Infection Control Today® that it might be time for pool or community testing.
APIC President Connie Steed Talks About What COVID Has Wrought
July 1st 2020Connie Steed, MSN, RN, CIC, FAPIC: “Our goal at APIC, which is the goal of all IPs, is to have healthcare without infection. That’s an arduous task, but that is our vision and goal. And the infection preventionists’ role will help drive that vision.”