Frank Diamond

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.”

Joachim L. Schultze, MD: “We decided that the knowledge that we have in immunology, as well as in genomics and single-cell technology, should be used to understand this new disease.”

“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…”

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.

The FDA wants providers to know about “contamination issues associated with reprocessing urological endoscopes, including cystoscopes, ureteroscopes and cystourethroscopes—devices used to view and access the urinary tract.”

Priya Nori, MD: “The immediate thing that the health care industry has to grapple with, even as COVID hopefully starts to settle down after the mass vaccination campaign … [will be] superbugs.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic has been a stark and painful reminder that nobody is safe until everyone is safe.”

Even assuming that up to 75% of people testing positive wouldn’t follow isolation guidance, the tests would greatly curtail infection, hospitalization, and death, argue investigators. The cost to the health care system would be worth it, investigators say.

Michael L. Millenson: “The CDC will pay more attention to infections. But there’s also an asterisk here. Will Congress continue to pay attention to infections? Will the administration’s budget continue to pay attention to infections? Will the media continue to pay attention to infections?”

Beau Wangtrakuldee, PhD: “In the health care industry in general, small sizes are typically based on Caucasian males, so once you get to women who truly have smaller frames there are no products available for them.”

Arjun Srinivasan, MD: “There’s a lot of potential for synergy between the infection prevention program and the antibiotic stewardship program.”

Investigators propose that their simulation models can be used in educating nurses and other health care professionals about how best to maintain good hand hygiene, and also where best to put alcohol-based hand disinfectants.

No deadline was given for when these goals should be reached and some of the data to be used will depend on hospitals voluntarily releasing their numbers to the CDC.

Sharon Ward-Fore, MS, MT(ASCP), CIC: "We’ve learned the hard way that restaurants, office settings, hair salons, fitness centers, and schools have really suffered for the lack of guidance by professionals like infection preventionists."

COVID-19 outbreak hits Kentucky nursing home a week after CMS relaxes visiting restrictions.

Investigators conclude that asymptomatic carriers increased the duration of the pandemic. Every patient should be tested for COVID-19.

Abby Basalely, MD: “The majority of children will recover from MIS-C and we see them thriving and doing well post hospitalization if they need hospitalization for the syndrome.”

In CMS’ official announcement easing restrictions for visiting nursing homes, no mention was made of the year anniversary—marked today—of when the WHO officially labeled COVID-19 a global pandemic. Still, in so many words, the agency said enough is enough.

Tanya Lewis, CRCST: “I just think that infection preventionists and sterile processors should always work as a team. It should always be a team effort. It’s not them or us. It’s not sterile processing. It’s not infection prevention, but it’s us as a team. And that’s the way we’re going to keep our patients safe.”

Linda S. Estep, BS MT (ASCP), CIC: “I’ve done many hand hygiene audits in my day, I still do hand hygiene audits, when I’m in the hospitals now. If they know who you are, they scatter. They know the infection preventionists.”

The decision by Texas and other states to reopen seems to disregard the threat posed by COVID-19 variants, opponents of the move argue.

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

Linda Spaulding RN, BC, CIC, CHEC, CHOP: “There have been 3,104,010 cases of COVID-19 among kids between the ages of zero and 20…. That means that 13.1% of all the cases of COVID-19 that we’ve seen in the US have been children.”

Twenty-six percent of people who are taking a wait-and-see approach about whether to get the COVID-19 vaccine say that they’d be more likely to get vaccinated if it involved just a single dose.

Kelly Cawcutt, MD, MS, FACP, FIDSA: “In a perfect world, vascular access teams and infection prevention teams really should be working very tightly together to optimize the practice of putting our vascular access in place.”

Investigators wanted to see how their method would fare against Acinetobacter baumannii and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and results were promising.

An FDA ruling this week quickens the process by which COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers can get to the market—and into arms—booster shots that are targeted at variants.

Daniel Burnett, MD, MBA: “The aerosols, the things that are the true danger and that can hang in the air for hours, depending on their size, are still released around the edges and around the nose of cloth masks. A cloth mask does very little to protect you.”

An “exponential” outbreak of COVID-19 occurred among health care workers most likely because they let their guard down during social interaction with colleagues.