COVID-19

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.”

How will the COVID vaccine be handled at each facility? Wil it be mandatory? Will it be given annually? Will it be a condition of employment? These are all questions that will need to be addressed.

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

Infection preventionists can coordinate with physicians and other subject matter experts on common areas of vaccine hesitancy among staff, and work with key stakeholders to address them.

In its push to get as many Americans vaccinated as soon as possible, the government is also pushing to get as many people qualified to administer the COVID-19 vaccinations as soon as possible.

A group of scientists and physicians charge that the CDC’s current guidance on masking might not be enough to meet the threat of COVID-19 variants.

Rebecca Leach, RN, BSN, MPH, CIC: “The flu vaccine is mandated where I work. I do see a day where the COVID-19 vaccine will be mandated as well in health care facilities especially if—as we expect—COVID is not going away.”

In response to COVID-19, companies manufacture robots that would complement the cleaning and disinfection work done by environmental services teams in hospitals. Might the machines also one day take their jobs?

As infection and hospitalization rates from COVID-19 plummet across America, medical experts worry about the variants and vaccine hesitancy.

Frequent, (three times a week) screening of our athletes has been key to the opening of professional sports. Our students deserve the same safety precautions as professional athletes.

Kevin Kavanagh, MD: “Throughout the history of evolution, and even through the history of mankind, you’ve seen species get wiped out. You’ve seen civilizations of man fall because of infections. And the thing that differentiates us from a tadpole is our science and our knowledge. And if we don’t take advantage of that….”

The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) argues that nursing homes in New York should have a fulltime IP on staff.

The CDC encourages double-masking if it’s done correctly, meaning with a tight fit. The agency updated the guidance with an eye on worrisome new COVID variants.

We need to have mandatory reporting of worker and patient acquisition of SARS-CoV-2 and the development of COVID-19 with metrics to provide us the most accurate estimate of cases so we can effectively plan and allocate resources.

Linda Spaulding RN, BC, CIC, CHEC, CHOP: “Now the new challenge is going to be will we get definitive answers that the COVID tests that we’re currently doing will pick this variant up?”

Double-masking can prove more cumbersome for many. If the goal is to protect the mask underneath, perhaps consider a face shield or a strategy for cleaning the mask more frequently.

Ann Marie Pettis, RN, BSN, CIC, FAPIC: “COVID-19 just never seems to let up. And every time you think you might be making a little bit of progress, some new thing comes along, like right now with potential resistance because of mutations. You can never let your guard down.”

The good news? The fact that 3 different viruses with 3 different lineages came up with the same mutation to evade natural immunity and the vaccines. And initial reports are that it only partially evades the vaccines.

Contact tracing is reactive—the goal is to avoid these close contact exposures in which people are interacting without masks and indoors. Practice makes permanence after all.

“Infection control measures, including surveillance, education, cleaning/disinfection, patient cohorting, isolation, and hand hygiene, effectively contained the outbreak; it was declared over within 2 months.”

Beware the loophole. Many clinics are often classified as office space, not health care buildings, so they do not have adhered to ventilation standards.

Caitlin Stowe MPH, CPH, CIC: “There’s still a lot we don’t know about SARS-CoV-2 and the direct mechanisms of transmission…. It can be aerosolized. However, there is evidence of indirect transmission from surfaces to people.”

Concerning the possibility of a B.1.1.7 COVID-19 surge, Michael Osterholm, PhD, and a member of President Joe Biden’s transition team, does not mince words: “That hurricane’s coming.”

Mary Jean Ricci MSN, RNBC: “[Infection preventionists] really need to think about how we’re getting people from the assessment area to the vaccination area to the evaluation area in a unidirectional flow so that we don’t have the spread of the virus at the time of inoculation.”