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Reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission in hospitals: focus on additional infection control strategies

Hospitals under pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic have experienced an additional challenge due to clusters of hospital-acquired COVID-19 infection occurring on non-COVID-19 wards. These clusters have involved both staff and patients and compromise staffing, bed management and routine care, especia...

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Autor principal: Dancer, Stephanie J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8511651/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34658477
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mpsur.2021.10.003
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author Dancer, Stephanie J.
author_facet Dancer, Stephanie J.
author_sort Dancer, Stephanie J.
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description Hospitals under pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic have experienced an additional challenge due to clusters of hospital-acquired COVID-19 infection occurring on non-COVID-19 wards. These clusters have involved both staff and patients and compromise staffing, bed management and routine care, especially delivery of elective surgical procedures. They have also contributed towards the overall morbidity and mortality of the pandemic. COVID-19 infection rates are rising again, so it is important to consider implementing additional activities designed to impede transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in acute hospitals. These aim to protect staff, patients and visitors, and conserve safe and continued access for patients needing routine and emergency surgical interventions. Current infection prevention strategies include hand hygiene; patient and staff screening; surveillance; personal protective equipment; cohorting and isolation; and enhanced cleaning. Additional activities include restriction of staff and patient movement; COVID-19 pathways for wards, operating theatres and outpatient services; bathroom management; and ensuring fresh air in the absence of effective mechanical ventilation systems. Seasonal pressures and spread of more contagious and/or vaccine-tolerant variants will continue to disrupt routine and emergency care of non-COVID-19 patients, as well as increase the risk of COVID-19 infection for staff and patients. Supplementary practical and cost-effective actions to limit spread in hospitals are explored in this article.
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spelling pubmed-85116512021-10-13 Reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission in hospitals: focus on additional infection control strategies Dancer, Stephanie J. Surgery (Oxf) Infection Hospitals under pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic have experienced an additional challenge due to clusters of hospital-acquired COVID-19 infection occurring on non-COVID-19 wards. These clusters have involved both staff and patients and compromise staffing, bed management and routine care, especially delivery of elective surgical procedures. They have also contributed towards the overall morbidity and mortality of the pandemic. COVID-19 infection rates are rising again, so it is important to consider implementing additional activities designed to impede transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in acute hospitals. These aim to protect staff, patients and visitors, and conserve safe and continued access for patients needing routine and emergency surgical interventions. Current infection prevention strategies include hand hygiene; patient and staff screening; surveillance; personal protective equipment; cohorting and isolation; and enhanced cleaning. Additional activities include restriction of staff and patient movement; COVID-19 pathways for wards, operating theatres and outpatient services; bathroom management; and ensuring fresh air in the absence of effective mechanical ventilation systems. Seasonal pressures and spread of more contagious and/or vaccine-tolerant variants will continue to disrupt routine and emergency care of non-COVID-19 patients, as well as increase the risk of COVID-19 infection for staff and patients. Supplementary practical and cost-effective actions to limit spread in hospitals are explored in this article. Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2021-11 2021-10-13 /pmc/articles/PMC8511651/ /pubmed/34658477 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mpsur.2021.10.003 Text en © 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Infection
Dancer, Stephanie J.
Reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission in hospitals: focus on additional infection control strategies
title Reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission in hospitals: focus on additional infection control strategies
title_full Reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission in hospitals: focus on additional infection control strategies
title_fullStr Reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission in hospitals: focus on additional infection control strategies
title_full_unstemmed Reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission in hospitals: focus on additional infection control strategies
title_short Reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission in hospitals: focus on additional infection control strategies
title_sort reducing the risk of covid-19 transmission in hospitals: focus on additional infection control strategies
topic Infection
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8511651/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34658477
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mpsur.2021.10.003
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