Frank Diamond

Maureen Spencer, RN, M.Ed.: “The World Health Organization did come out and said that they support the concept that this is droplet and airborne. And what that does is it changes our approach for infection prevention.”

Jack Regan, PhD: “We’ve never developed a vaccine against coronavirus. And because of that, the question is how efficacious is this vaccine going to be? How long is the immunity going to last?”

Before 2000, I was uncommon in the United States. I’ve become much more common since, and though health experts don’t know just how many people I infect each year, they can say with certainty that I am a major cause of infections in healthcare settings.

Jenny Hayes, MSN, RN, CIC: “Asking the patient to wear a mask, which is something that we do in our facility, can be challenging at that point, especially as labor progresses, and you’re to the point of pushing. That right there offers a set of unique challenges for both the patient and the staff in the room.”

It will also be necessary to again train other professionals the way IPs have historically trained them about infection prevention, because a lot of the old rules had to be set aside when COVID-19 surged.

Julie McKinney, PhD: “If you’re going to disinfect, you’re going to let it sit for three minutes and then you’re going to wipe it. If you’re going to sanitize, you only have to leave it for 30 seconds and then wipe.”

The Trump administration has decided that the COVID-19 data will no longer be reported to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through that agency’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN).

Charles Gerba, PhD: “I really think that in the future, what you really need is a specialist in infection control who understands both the environmental health services and also the professional staff that deals with the patients.”

The filtering face piece respirators will be manufactured at General Motor’s facility in Warren, Mich. The company had to revamp its manufacturing process to accommodate making the respirators, creating four separate assemble stations.

Harry Peled, MD: “I think for administrators and infection control people, the attitude has to be there is enough evidence that the wearing of N95s should be official. The claim that we’re going to wait for perfect evidence is just not tenable. We don’t do that for anything else in medicine.”

Mary Jean Ricci, MSN, RNBC: “There’s also the question of how do we encourage staff to get the vaccination, if there is a vaccination, for COVID-19? Currently, we have employees in facilities caring for patients who do not get the flu vaccine and don’t have a medical reason for not doing it…. I think that that’s a big area where infection control practitioners are going to have to focus their energy to encourage receiving the vaccination when this is over.”

Up until now, the workers had to prove convincingly that they became infected on the job. But 16 states are now considering putting the onus on the hospital: Make it prove that the worker didn’t get the disease on the job.

Brent James, MD: “Those practices and those hospitals have no choice. A number of them face going out of business, even with the loans the government's giving today.”

Sharon Ward-Fore, MS, MT(ASCP), CIC, says that non-healthcare companies need a lot of help following infection prevention and control guidelines. They may call on infection preventionists for that help.

Kevin Kavanagh, MD, the founder of the patient advocaty group Health Watch USAsm, has been sounding the alarm about coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) from the beginning. He tells Infection Control Today® that it might be time for pool or community testing.

Infection preventionists and their skills will be in high demand in coming years in non-healthcare settings.

The FDA issues guidance on just how pharmaceutical companies should go about the manufacture of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Investigators argue in the Annals of Internal Medicine that all healthcare workers in inpatient settings caring for COVID-19 patients should be equipped with N95s.

Fibi Attia, MD, the infection prevention coordinator at Penn State Milton S. Hersey Medical Center, says that the main challenge for infection preventionists in the COVID-19 pandemic is not knowing who might be carrying the disease.

Sometimes the surfaces that are deemed easiest to keep clean in a hospital pediatric ward wind up being the most contaminated after cleaning. Preconceived notions may play a part.

Stephanie Taylor, MD: “In general, airflow has been managed by the engineers, by the architects, by the facility managers, and not so much by the clinicians. There is a lot you can do in indoor air management to decrease transmission of infections.”

Hand hygiene monitoring devices and systems only work within the confines of a strong hand hygiene culture, a new study says.

Michael Millenson: “Infection preventionists are not exactly at the top of the hierarchy. Right? And medicine in hospitals is very hierarchical.”

Disinfectant wipes became all the rage when coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) struck but a study in the works says there's a dearth of knowledge about just how they should be used.

Jaan Sidorov, MD, the CEO of PA Clinical Network and the former medical director of Geisinger Health Plan talks about the many changes infection preventionists and other healthcare professionals will most likely face.

Ann Marie Pettis, RN, BSN, CIC, FAPIC: “If indeed flu comes at the same time a second wave of COVID comes, that’s going to be difficult-unbelievably difficult because the symptoms obviously are somewhat similar. We’ll be trying to rule both of those things out. It will create more of a risk for a surge, and it will put more taxing on our PPE supplies.”

N95 decontamination must meet 3 criteria. It needs to: inactivate the pathogen, it can’t damage or degrade the N95 in any way, and it should not introduce an additional hazard to the healthcare worker.

The common method used to determine IP staffing-using a ratio of IPs to the number of beds or the number of patients-might not be the best way of determining just how many IPs an institution needs. 

The nurses in the study “grew psychologically” under the pressure of coping with COVID-19. They reevaluated their values, and found motivation by being grateful for the support they received from family, friends and colleagues.