COVID-19

The filtering face piece respirators will be manufactured at General Motor’s facility in Warren, Mich. The company had to revamp its manufacturing process to accommodate making the respirators, creating four separate assemble stations.

An existing US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved anticoagulant called Heparin may lower the odds of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

One news item: Hospitals will now be reporting COVID-19 information to the National Guard instead of to the CDC through the TeleTrack system within the Department of Health and Human Services.

New 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.

Harry 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.”

Mary 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.”

Biopharmaceutical New Technologies (BioNTech) for the investigational vaccines BNT162b1 and BNT162b1. The vaccines are the result of a joint research venture between Pfizer and Biopharmaceutical New Technologies (BioNTech).

Up 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.

Brent James, MD: “Those practices and those hospitals have no choice. A number of them face going out of business, even with the loans the government's giving today.”

There is a desperate need to infuse SNFs with more resources, not only in terms of personal protective equipment, but also the critical infection prevention resources and staffing.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved Lysol Disinfectant Spray to combat SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Sharon Ward-Fore, MS, MT(ASCP), CIC, says that non-healthcare companies need a lot of help following infection prevention and control guidelines. They may call on infection preventionists for that help.

Kevin 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.

Infection preventionists and their skills will be in high demand in coming years in non-healthcare settings.

Connie 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.”

It’s when infection preventionists leave the hospital or go to get a coffee in the cafeteria, that behaviors can become lax. We opt to take breaks from masking, exhausted from it all.

The FDA issues guidance on just how pharmaceutical companies should go about the manufacture of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Investigators argue in the Annals of Internal Medicine that all healthcare workers in inpatient settings caring for COVID-19 patients should be equipped with N95s.

Fibi Attia, MD, the infection prevention coordinator at Penn State Milton S. Hersey Medical Center, says that the main challenge for infection preventionists in the COVID-19 pandemic is not knowing who might be carrying the disease.

Stephanie Taylor, MD: “In general, airflow has been managed by the engineers, by the architects, by the facility managers, and not so much by the clinicians. There is a lot you can do in indoor air management to decrease transmission of infections.”

While the rest of the hospital bustles with energy as healthcare workers fight COVID-19, emergency departments have been oddly quiet because of the drop in elective surgeries.

Michael Millenson: “Infection preventionists are not exactly at the top of the hierarchy. Right? And medicine in hospitals is very hierarchical.”

COVID-19 cases in many states have risen and the false narrative is that this is because of increased testing. But the rise in cases far outstrips the rise in testing.

Jaan Sidorov, MD, the CEO of PA Clinical Network and the former medical director of Geisinger Health Plan talks about the many changes infection preventionists and other healthcare professionals will most likely face.

Ann Marie Pettis, RN, BSN, CIC, FAPIC: “If indeed flu comes at the same time a second wave of COVID comes, that’s going to be difficult-unbelievably difficult because the symptoms obviously are somewhat similar. We’ll be trying to rule both of those things out. It will create more of a risk for a surge, and it will put more taxing on our PPE supplies.”

Those of us in healthcare and infection prevention must focus on sustainable efforts to combat COVID-19. How do we maintain readiness and response without burnout? There’s no solid answer to this, but a big piece really goes into the establishment of plans and education. 

The nurses in the study “grew psychologically” under the pressure of coping with COVID-19. They reevaluated their values, and found motivation by being grateful for the support they received from family, friends and colleagues. 

Sharon Ward-Fore, MS, MT(ASCP), CIC: “It is a collaboration, and I think the most successful environmental services department has an infection preventionist who really enjoys working with EVS.”

A portable anteroom can be used as an extra layer of protection between the isolation space and the rest of the hospital. A positively pressured anteroom, for instance, lets staff don PPE in a protected environment.