Frank Diamond

Ann Scheck McAlearney, ScD, MS: “Infection preventionists … can provide managers with the guidance provided by this type of research, as well as the data to support infection prevention efforts….”

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra: “Phase 2 of the COVID origins study must be launched with terms of reference that are transparent, science-based, and give international experts the independence to fully assess the source of the virus and the early days of the outbreak.”

Efforts to pinpoint the pandemic’s cause might have been stymied by the Chinese Communist Party.

Infection preventionists—many of whom are trying to tamp down vaccine hesitancy among some fellow health care professionals—should prepare to help with an autumn campaign.

Last week the number of COVID-19 cases dropped below 40,000 for the first time since mid-September. This past week, they’ve dropped below 30,000, about a 20% improvement in just 1 week.

Linda Spaulding RN, BC, CIC: “It only takes you saying something a couple times that the OR knows is absolutely absurd and incorrect, and it’s going to ruin the relationship for a long time. Infection preventionists really need to take the responsibility of learning.”

"We have all longed for this moment when we can get back to some sense of normalcy," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, said.

A growing avalanche of real-world evidence attests to the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccinations. The more people of every age group who can be vaccinated the better, says the CDC.

The World Health Organization calls the B.1.617 a COVID-19 variant of global concern. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that it’s not that much of a concern in the United States for now.

Sara M. Reese, PhD, MPH, CIC, and Sarah Smathers, MPH, CIC, were 2 of the coauthors of a recent study that talks about how hospitals and other health care systems can bolster IP ranks.

Americans seem to be welcoming the post-COVID-19 world with open (and vaccinated) arms these days.

There are not enough infection preventionists to go around now, and trends suggest that there may even be fewer in the future. But there are ways to shore up the ranks, a study says.

An actively engaged hospital management team can make the difference between success or failure when it comes to managing health care-acquired infections, a study states.

Nursing homes, already strapped for employees, lost about 19,500 workers last month, according to government figures. Question: What’s happened to all the funding nursing homes have gotten because of COVID-19?

Some health care workers who are hesitant to get the COVID-19 vaccine are waiting to see what the vaccine does to their colleagues who have gotten it first, a study suggests.

Kevin Kavanagh, MD: “India has the double mutation [COVID-19] variant. That’s the variant that has two escape mutations. And that is a variant we do not need to get into the United States and have it spread. Infection preventionists need to be out there beating the drum. First in their facility: They need to get everybody vaccinated.”

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

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

Christina Yen, MD: “For any infection preventionists who are thinking about or are reviewing the need for VHP sometime in the future, just know that those colleagues that we’ve relied on this time around are going to be there and are going to be your partners in the VHP process.”

The lessons infection preventionists at the University of Mississippi Medical Center learned from an outbreak of respiratory illness at the facility’s NICU in 2019, were later used to help deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ultraviolet light should be used in concert with traditional cleaning and disinfection procedures utilized by environmental services teams, study’s author maintains.

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.