NHS told to raise its game on IPC or face omicron-driven surge in hospital infections

The NHS must apply Covid infection prevention and control measures more robustly if it is to avoid a steep rise in infections within healthcare settings, a senior doctor at NHS England has said.

The warning came from NHS England national clinical director for antimicrobial resistance and infection prevention and control Mark Wilcox during a webinar for NHS leaders.

He said that the effectiveness of the vaccination programme had led “understandably” to the NHS being more relaxed when it came to Covid IPC.

However, he warned that “the effectiveness of the vaccines has diminished substantially with respect to two doses” because of the omicron variant, and that “if we carry on with the level of IPC that we have been lulled into then we will see very significant problems with nosocomial infection”.

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Source: HSJ, 14 December 2021