Prevention

What happens in India, or anywhere else in the world, doesn't stay there. The longer COVID-19 hangs around, the more chance it has of mutating into a variant that the vaccines won't stop.

Between the trifecta of departments responsible for infection prevention—EVS, nursing and infection prevention—it’s every individual’s responsibility to ensure surface cleaning and disinfecting are done quickly and effectively.

During this time, as hospital case counts drop, IPs are expected to just switch back to normal while still ensuring a readiness to respond to COVID-19.

The truth is that variants will occur where the virus spreads and until SARS-CoV-2 is controlled everywhere, it won’t be controlled anywhere. What is occurring in India is a prime example of this.

Nurses need a seat at the table when discussing PPE stockpiling and purchasing practices to share their lived experiences and help the team discover where practice deviated from plans. Infection preventionists should support the nurses in these discussions as allies.

IPs and other health care professionals needed to improvise. That improvisation led to investigations into how many times an N95 can be reused and still keep SARS- CoV-2 at bay.

Bug of the Month helps educate readers about existing and emerging pathogens of clinical importance in healthcare facilities today.

Individuals vaccinated against COVID-19 do not need to wear a mask outdoors when in small groups, when dining outside, or when biking or running, the CDC announced. However, face-covering precautions should still be taken in some settings.

MIT professors argue that many variables should be included when determining just how much social distancing is needed in different indoor settings.

Hospital employees performed hand hygiene under the gaze of infection preventionists, and the study data were gathered during the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you work in a health care facility, you need to be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2. If you choose not to become vaccinated, then you should choose not to be working in a health care setting.

Though spring is in the air and we’re all anxious to get our old lives back, we’re not quite out of the COVID-19 woods yet.

Investigators University of Michigan-Flint, School of Nursing noted that the Cooper Tool and the Stone criteria are similar but use different methods to arrive at a UTI diagnosis.

The inspection was initiated after reports had come to the surface that workers at the plant had accidently contaminated J&J doses with the virus from the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is also manufactured there.

Kaiser Family Foundation: “Federal, state, and local officials, and the private sector, will face the challenge of having to figure out how to increase willingness to get vaccinated among those still on the fence.”

Luke Daum, PhD: “With regards to testing in the US, no other country compares to us. We do a great job in all 50 states of testing, having turnaround testing for using qPCR collection for at-home, or through the drive-through centers at CVS or Walgreens.”

It’s important to match COVID-19 masking rules to reasoning behind them.

Meri Pearson, MPH, CIC: “Infection preventionists still need to do those active audits to make sure that they’re actually seeing what’s happening at the bedside.”

The number of syphilis cases in 2000 raised hopes that it could be eradicated, but since 2015 cases have risen 74%.

The infection prevention and business intelligence teams at Piedmont Healthcare put their heads together to streamline the process of tracking health care-acquired infections.

Emilie Bédard, PhD: “We worked in collaboration with infection prevention, environmental services…. We had a multi-disciplinary team to make sure that we would look at all aspects of this approach.”

Surgical masks offer better protection against aerosolized particles than face shields or even better than face shields and surgical masks used together, study finds.

The multidisciplinary team included NICU nurses, physicians, nurse practitioners and, perhaps most important of all, environmental services personnel. “We met with the environmental services staff, and we explained to them that this is a critical situation in the neonatal ICU. And this cannot spread more.”

Stand with the 7000 other infection preventionists who decided it’s important to be certified. It isn’t easy, but the satisfaction of this achievement far outweighs the preparation needed to pass.

One thing that will haunt me and many health care personnel in both acute care and LTCFs forever is that so many people died without a family member at their bedside.

The CDC and FDA are expected to announce an immediate pause for administering the one-shot adenovirus Ad26.COV2.S while advising states distributing the product to consider doing the same.

Those fully vaccinated had 90% protection against infection regardless of symptoms and even partial immunization yielded 80% protection against infection.

“APIC will be focused on conducting research on how health equity and health disparities should be addressed in the field of infection prevention and control including designing interventions…”

Infection preventionists (IPs) are now faced with delivering a difficult message. It is much easier to advocate for vaccinations which prevent disease, than it is for vaccinations which lessen the severity of disease or reduces your chances of becoming infected.

The study comes at a time when—despite all the attention and health care resources being thrown at COVID-19—medical experts have begun to turn a wary eye toward bacteriological pathogens.