Impact of COVID-19 pandemic waves on health-care worker hand hygiene activity in department of medicine and ICU as measured by an automated monitoring system

BACKGROUND: Hand hygiene (HH) compliance among health-care workers is important for preventing transmission of infectious diseases. AIM: To describe health-care worker hand hygiene activity in ICU and non-ICU patients’ rooms, using an automated monitoring system (AMS), before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: At the Intercommunal Hospital of Créteil, near Paris, France, alcohol-based hand sanitizer (ABHS) consumption in the Department of Medicine (DM) and ICU was recorded using an AMS during four periods: before, during, and after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and during its second wave. FINDINGS: From 1st February to 30th November 2020, in the DM, the mean number of doses per patient-day for each of the four periods was, respectively, 5.7 (±0.3), 19.4 (±1.3), 17.6 (±0.7), and 7.9 (±0.2, P < 0.0001). In contrast, ICU ABHS consumption remained relatively constant. In the DM, during the pandemic waves, ABHS consumption was higher in rooms of COVID-19 patients than in other patients’ rooms. Multivariate analysis showed ABHS consumption was associated with the period in the DM, and with the number of HCWs in the ICU. CONCLUSION: An AMS allows real-time collection of ABHS consumption data that can be used to adapt training and prevention measures to specific hospital departments.