Editor's Note This study by researchers from Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, finds that completing a primary vaccination series after recovering from COVID-19 reduces the risk of reinfection by about half. A total of 95,000 Rhode Island residents participated in this cohort study, including residents and employees of long-term congregate…

Read More

Editor's Note This study, led by the University of Miami and sponsored by the CDC, finds that unvaccinated first responders (eg, law enforcement officers, firefighters, and others) were more likely to develop COVID-19 and less likely to believe in the effectiveness and safety of vaccines than their vaccinated counterparts. Of…

Read More

Editor's Note This Italian study describes the long-term features of the immune response to COVID-19 for different ages after mild infection. In this cohort of 252 family clusters with COVID-19, the immune response persisted until 12 months after infection in all age groups, with significantly higher antibody peaks for younger…

Read More

Editor's Note The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a surge in antimicrobial resistance in US hospitals, reversing years of progress, according to a new analysis released July 12 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). During the first year of the pandemic, antimicrobial-resistant infections and deaths increased in hospitals…

Read More

Editor's Note Scientists at UC San Diego and Scripps Research have developed tools to analyze wastewater that have proven effective in identifying emerging COVID-19 variants and predicting surges. COVID-19 patients shed the virus in their stool, whether they have symptoms or not. In the summer of 2020 the scientists began…

Read More

Editor's Note Three cases of the newest Omicron subvariant BA.2.75 have been detected on the West Coast, two in California and one in Washington, the July 11 Becker’s Hospital Review reports. The subvariant is also in India and 10 other countries. The subvariant has a large number of mutations that…

Read More

Editor's Note Researchers at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, gathered an interdisciplinary team to organize a safe and time efficient precleaning workflow for their fast-paced GI clinic that decreased time spent precleaning by 50%. The researchers identified inadequate precleaning processes, including staff who did not follow…

Read More

Editor's Note The Joint Commission, on June 28, announced a new Quick Safety advisory on “Managing packaged sterile supplies and devices.” The advisory provides guidance to keep patients safe from infection and harm from expired or compromised supplies and devices and urges healthcare workers (HCWs) to pay close attention to…

Read More

Editor's Note This study by researchers from the Arizona Department of Health finds that healthcare associated infections (HAIs) significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs). From 2016 through 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, Arizona acute care hospitals reported that HAIs decreased significantly: CLABSIs decreased 32%.…

Read More

Editor's Note According to the June 24 Becker’s Hospital Review, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) latest US COVID-19 statistics include the following: As of June 23, the 7-day average for newly reported COVID-19 cases dropped 5.6% to 97,430. The weekly average for COVID-19 related deaths dropped by…

Read More