Tori Whitacre Martonicz

Investigators have learned invaluable lessons from 2 and a half years of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly on human immunity. Is natural infection better for long-term protection against COVID-19 or is vaccination? What does the data say?

Ambassador Deborah Birx, MD, believes not enough is doing to prepare for future pandemics. What are her recommendations? Find out in this final installment of her interview with Infection Control Today.

How much information should the public have about infectious diseases? Can the public handle the truth? If the correct information is not given out, will the public believe the medical leaders when another serious disease threatens the public’s health? Ambassador Deborah Birx, MD, continues her discussion with ICT.

CDC’s Medical Advisor for the Healthcare Safety Network, Raymund Dantes, MD, MPH, reviews sepsis and what infection preventionists, epidemiologists, and other health care workers need to know.

The workshop included members of the public, academics, and representatives of the pharmaceutical industry to discuss development of new medicines for preventing HAIs and antibiotic resistance.

Despite the gap of the current and desired rate of COVID-19 vaccinations of pregnant individuals, the systematic review and meta-analysis of 10 observational studies show the vaccines are safe and effective.

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

Ambassador Deborah Birx, MD, told Infection Control Today® exclusively, “Every mistake that we made with COVID-19 in January and February of 2020, repeated in real time with monkeypox.”

Ambassador Deborah Birx said in an exclusive interview with ICT® that there are “extraordinary structural barriers in the US to access” medical care. Individuals may have insurance, but they cannot access care.

Using an ultrasound transducer may look easy, but it is a highly specialized skill, and to use a transducer requires education, accountability, and competency checks to occur regularly.

Ambassador Deborah Birx, MD, infectious disease expert, and a former director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH, weigh in on that agency's significantly changed quarantine and distancing guidelines.

Using ultrasound transducers is often necessary in the emergency department, but too often the proper procedures to protect against health care associated infections are not followed, and clinicians are worried.

Infection Control Today® asked Matt Pullen, MD, the questions from our readers about the NY polio patient.

A carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB) cluster was identified and stopped because of due diligence of the infection preventionists at an acute care facility in Louisiana.

The 16th annual conference will highlight speakers from around the globe, offer continuing education credits, and will be held as a webinar on September 14, 2022.

Adding staff is not the cure-all the CMS hopes it is. Higher wages and better government financial assistance would help, but fixing the system is not going to be easy.

Standardizing disinfectant wipes across multiple facilities requires comparing active ingredients, kill claims, and dwell times.

The discrepancy between the regulatory bodies has caused a controversy creating an environment that is not conducive to discussions between practitioners and their suppliers.

CRE cases are considered a US public health threat, and, concerningly, a small, but notable proportion of CRE cases occur in patients without traditional health care risk factors.

This is the third in a series of articles based on ICT®'s exclusive interview with Oliver D. Kripfgans, PhD, FAIUM, about ultrasound transducer disinfection, and the consequences of using the incorrect type.

Despite the lessons learned from SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, monkeypox is still spreading worldwide, and those lessons do not seem to be halting its progress. The WHO hopes to change that.

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

Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk, PhD, and her colleagues examined how COVID-19 affected infection preventionists’ mental and physical health, and in an exclusive interview, she discusses how facilities and IPs themselves can mitigate burnout.

Improper standards complicate cleaning and disinfecting and can represent a wasteful use of resources, specifically when facilities also may lack access to high-level technology.

While a few ultrasound procedures suggest increased instances of patient infections due to low-level disinfection techniques, statistically, results from peer-reviewed studies do not confirm this idea.

The report addresses how the US’s decisions on the pandemic generally increased antimicrobial resistance, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations for the future.

For terminal cleans, investigators studied the effect of UV-C disinfection added to chlorine-based disinfectants on the likelihood of MDRO transmission from the source occupant to subsequently exposed occupants.

The strength of The Association for Professionals and Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) is the volunteer members and the critical work they perform to assist both novice and veteran IPs.

Certain disinfecting cycles can be used to extend the frequency and use of single-use respirators, but how do they affect the respirator filtration efficiency?

Two patients were found with C auris in the CVAHCS beginning in October 2020, and a recent study describes how the facility handled the situation.