COVID-19

All the ancillary and support staff, including infection preventionists, have been called upon to help support the work of the frontline caregivers and are subject to the same stressors and potential for burnout.

If children get vaccinated and no new variant emerges, new infections will drop from 134,000 a day now to about 9,000 a day by March, according to 1 scenario. Deaths would fall to about 100 a day.

Investigators concluded that their data demonstrate the “high and stable effectiveness” of the single-dose COVID-19 vaccine across both high-risk patient subpopulations, as well as residents in areas more adversely affected by the delta variant.

The allocations are scheduled to begin next month, with initial awards totaling $885, of which $500 million will go to what the CDC calls “strike teams” that will focus on nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

CDC: “For most children and adults with symptomatic SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, infection, isolation, and precautions can be discontinued 10 days after symptom onset and after resolution of fever for at least 24 hours and improvement of other symptoms.”

Health care workers know all too well the lasting and debilitating effects of long COVID-19. They were one of the first to become vaccinated and are some of the first experiencing breakthrough infections. They are tired, burned out, and many are on the brink of collapse.

Some medical experts say that in this case, inaction is also an action—either the US gives boosters or does not. That decision needs to be based on the best available evidence. Instead, there seems to be a desire to wait another 6 months for pristine randomized controlled studies.

The CDC’s Runa Gokhale, MD, MPH: “I think that there is a role for infection preventionists to play here, and they are a community that we’ve been trying to engage through some of our sepsis awareness and sepsis prevention efforts.”

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending September 17.

Linda Spaulding, RB-BC, CIC: “The time to hold nursing homes accountable is not the time when everything’s falling apart, and they don’t know what to do, and there’s nobody there to guide them.”

The National Institutes of Health yesterday unveiled a $470 million study that it hopes will mine data from 30,000–40,000 people who suffer from long COVID. Right now, there are more questions than answers.

Vaccines work. They ward off severe illness and death. But they do not make health care workers invulnerable to breakthrough infections, according to a research letter in JAMA Open Network.

New antifungal agents that are being investigated for possible use against C. auris, such as Ibrexafungerp (Brexafemme), show promise—so far.

Researchers found the mu variant to be the most resistant variant to antibodies from either previous infection or from vaccines, a spot that had been previously occupied by the beta, or the South African, variant.

The pathogen can lurk on blankets, bed rails, trolley handles, sheets, door handles, light switches, bedside tables, bedside table drawers, curtains, sinks, food tables, curtains, normal saline stands.

The data seem to give credence to the government’s push to get more Americans vaccinated against COVID-19.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending September 10.

The further away from an infected person you are, the less likely you are to contract the disease. But you are still not safe at 6 feet. The virus is airborne and can spread much further to the back of the classroom.

President Biden: “The bottom line: We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers.”

President Biden tonight plans to outline 6 steps that the US needs to take to—in the short term—stem the latest COVID-19 surge, and—long term—put this pandemic behind us for good.

COVID-19 cases occurring in children rose 26.8% from August 26 to September 2, according to new data.

As children head back to school, health care officials brace for a surge caused by Labor Day travel, and worry about unvaccinated teachers.

After the Delta surge subsides, another surge is expected, possibly from the Mu variant. If Mu completely escapes immunity from vaccines and past infections, we must resort to stringent public health strategies.

Touchdown! Attendance at professional and college football games may resume with COVID-19 mitigation measures, according to a study. But will the delta variant move the goalpost?

The outbreak underscores the Delta variant’s potential for rapid spread especially in schoolchildren who are too young to be vaccinated.

Close to 85% of people hospitalized with COVID-19 said that they were not back to their pre-COVID lifestyle 1 month later, says the study.

Investigators created models which estimated the number of COVID-19 deaths and cases that would have occurred if the early vaccine campaign had never happened.

Questions that dog gain-of-function research relate to oversight of these potentially lethal projects and the secrecy surrounding them. Did such research cause COVID-19 to leak out of a laboratory in Wuhan, China?

Health care workers were significantly more likely to become infected and have severe symptoms, the study found.

In a study that has not yet been peer reviewed and had been done on mice, Japanese investigators pinpoint Delta variant mutations that might be able to evade COVID-19 vaccine antibodies.