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Showing results for tags 'Transmission'.
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Content ArticleThe emergence of the omicron variant has raised concerns that the pandemic is not yet over. In this BMJ opinion piece, William et al. outline four key lessons that governments need to learn from to protect against future pandemics
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News ArticlePoliticians and doctors in Germany have called for urgent action to control the spread of COVID-19 after a record number of cases were reported on 11 November. Germany had 50 196 new confirmed Covid cases on 11 November, up from 39 676 cases on 10 November and 9658 on 1 November, showed figures from the Robert Koch Institute. A total of 235 Covid related deaths were reported on 11 November, up from 23 on 1 November. Speaking in the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament, the federal vice chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said that immediate steps must be taken to “winterproof” Germany against what is being described as the nation’s fourth wave of Covid-19. Scholz will meet next week with the prime ministers of Germany’s 16 states to discuss new measures to fight the pandemic. “The virus is still with us and threatens the health of citizens,” Scholz said, adding that efforts must be intensified to convince unvaccinated Germans to become fully vaccinated and encourage those already vaccinated to have the booster shot." Everything must be done, he said, to ensure “that millions of citizens get a booster—that is the task of the next weeks and months.” Read full story Source: BMJ, 12 November 2021
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Content ArticleOzSAGE has created this infographic for creating safer indoor air for workspaces. It should be used with masks as a complete strategy. OzSAGE is a multi-disciplinary network of Australian experts from a broad range of sectors relevant to the well-being of the Australian population during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Content ArticleWhen Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge upgraded its face masks for staff working on COVID-19 wards to filtering face piece 3 (FFP3) respirators, it saw a dramatic fall – up to 100% – in hospital-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infections among these staff. Healthcare workers – particularly those working on COVID-19 wards – are much more likely to be exposed to coronavirus, so it’s important we understand the best ways of keeping them safe The findings are reported by a team at the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) NHS Foundation Trust. The research has not yet been peer-reviewed, but is being released early because of the urgent need to share information relating to the pandemic.
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Content ArticleA new analysis of the risks and benefits of offering two doses of COVID-19 vaccination to all 12-17 year olds in England shows that the benefits clearly outweigh the risks, given the current high case rates. In the UK currently a single dose of vaccine is recommended for all 12-17 year olds. The research, which is in press with the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, estimates hospital and ICU admissions, deaths and cases of long COVID averted over a 16-week period by vaccinating all 12-17 year olds in England. The analysis includes high and low case rate scenarios.
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Content ArticleIn this study the authors characterised the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 transmission within a hospital setting, identifying key differences across the two pandemic waves, as well as the relative contribution of different groups and hospital locations to within-hospital transmission. They found the prevention and control measures that evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic may have had a significant impact on reducing infections between healthcare workers, but were insufficient during the second wave to prevent a high number of patient-to-patient transmissions. As hospital-acquired cases appeared to drive most onward transmissions, more frequent and rapid identification and isolation of these cases will be required to break hospital transmission chains in subsequent pandemic waves.
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Content ArticleAs public health teams respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, containment and understanding of the modes of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission is of utmost importance for policy making. During this time, governmental agencies have been instructing the community on handwashing and physical distancing measures. However, there is no agreement on the role of aerosol transmission for SARS-CoV-2. Tang et al. aimed to review the evidence of aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Several studies support that aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is plausible, and the plausibility score (weight of combined evidence) is 8 out of 9. Precautionary control strategies should consider aerosol transmission for effective mitigation of SARS-CoV-2.
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News ArticleFollowing a number of serious infections, hospitals have warned about the risks of wearing the wrong kind of face mask during surgery. This comes after a patient safety alert was issued by NHS England where it was reported that respirator masks have been acquired by the millions during the coronavirus pandemic but sometimes have been deployed in inappropriate settings. “These incident reports and feedback from services suggest that the risks of valved respirators and PAPRs for surgical and invasive procedures is not well recognised, and that their use may have become routine in some theatre environments.” NHS England said in the document. Read full story. Source: The Independent, 26 August 2021
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Content ArticleDuring the rapid rise in COVID-19 illnesses and deaths globally, and notwithstanding recommended precautions, questions are voiced about routes of transmission for this pandemic disease. Inhaling small airborne droplets is probable as a third route of infection, in addition to more widely recognised transmission via larger respiratory droplets and direct contact with infected people or contaminated surfaces. While uncertainties remain regarding the relative contributions of the different transmission pathways, Morawska et al. argue that existing evidence is sufficiently strong to warrant engineering controls targeting airborne transmission as part of an overall strategy to limit infection risk indoors. Appropriate building engineering controls include sufficient and effective ventilation, possibly enhanced by particle filtration and air disinfection, avoiding air recirculation and avoiding overcrowding. Often, such measures can be easily implemented and without much cost, but if only they are recognised as significant in contributing to infection control goals. The authors believe that the use of engineering controls in public buildings, including hospitals, shops, offices, schools, kindergartens, libraries, restaurants, cruise ships, elevators, conference rooms or public transport, in parallel with effective application of other controls (including isolation and quarantine, social distancing and hand hygiene), would be an additional important measure globally to reduce the likelihood of transmission and thereby protect healthcare workers, patients and the general public.
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Content ArticleScientific and policy bodies’ failure to acknowledge and act on the evidence base for airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in a timely way is both a mystery and a scandal. In this study, Greenhalgh et al. applied theories from Bourdieu to address the question, “How was a partial and partisan scientific account of SARS-CoV-2 transmission constructed and maintained, leading to widespread imposition of infection control policies which de-emphasised airborne transmission?”.
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News ArticleThousands of hospital patients were allowed to return to their care homes without a Covid test despite a direct plea to the government from major care providers not to allow the practice, the Observer has been told. As the crisis began to unfold in early March 2020, providers held an emergency meeting with department of health officials in which they urged the government not to force them to accept untested residents. However, weeks later, official advice remained that tests were not mandatory and thousands of residents are thought to have returned to their homes without a negative Covid result. The revelation will heap further pressure on the health secretary, Matt Hancock, who has admitted some care residents returned from hospital without a test. It comes after Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s former senior adviser, last week accused Hancock of misleading the prime minister over the policy, during his unprecedented evidence in parliament. Some 25,000 people were discharged to care homes between 17 March and 15 April, and there is widespread belief among social care workers and leaders that this allowed the virus to get into the homes. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 29 May 2021
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News ArticleAlmost as soon as the pandemic struck early last year, NHS England recognised that patients catching Covid-19 while they were in hospital for non-Covid care was a real risk and could lead to even more deaths than were already occurring. Unfortunately their fears have been borne out by events since – every acute hospital in England has been hit by this problem to some extent. Over the last 15 months various NHS and medical bodies have looked into hospital-acquired Covid and published reports and detailed guidance to help hospitals stem its spread. They include the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) and Public Health England (PHE). Last May, for example, PHE estimated that 20% of coronavirus infections in hospitalised patients and almost 90% of infections among healthcare staff may have been nosocomial, meaning they were caught in a hospital setting. Before the pandemic the NHS was over-stretched and resources were limited. The crisis distorted it further out of shape and despite NHS staff making huge efforts to contain the virus in extremely challenging circumstances, too often they were overwhelmed. There are many other reasons, including inadequate ventilation, the sharing of equipment, and nurses and doctors having to gather at nurses’ stations and in doctors’ messes. Some bereaved relatives also cite hospitals deciding – inexplicably – to put their Covid-free loved ones in a bay or ward with one or more people who had the disease, sometimes resulting in tragedy. While some of these inherent weaknesses have been addressed, others remain, leaving further infections and even more deaths in this way a distinct possibility if the NHS is hit by another Covid surge. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 24 May 2021
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News Article
England test-and-trace glitch blamed for spread of India Covid variant
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A glitch in the government’s £37bn test-and-trace system may have helped fuel the spread of a highly-transmissible Covid variant in one of the UK’s worst-hit towns, it has emerged. The software error meant that more than 700 infected people and their close contacts were not promptly passed on to local health teams, allowing them to potentially spread the disease further. The number of missing cases was highest in Blackburn with Darwen, where about 300 people are believed to have been lost in the system during a faulty IT upgrade. The Lancashire town is battling one of the UK’s largest outbreaks of the fast-spreading variant first identified in India. Labour has described the news as “jaw-dropping”. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 20 May 2021 -
Content ArticleREACT-1 is the largest population surveillance study being undertaken in England that examines the prevalence of the virus causing COVID-19 in the general population. It uses test results and feedback from over 150,000 participants each month. The findings will provide the government with a better understanding of the virus’s transmission and the risks associated with different population subgroups throughout England. This will inform government policies to protect health and save lives.
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News ArticleNearly 20 major healthcare bodies are appealing to the Prime Minister for better personal protection against coronavirus. They say at least 930 health and care workers have died of COVID-19 and more are experiencing long-term effects. In a letter, they say measures to stop airborne spreading are "inadequate" and call for urgent improvement in masks and other defences against variants. The government said it was monitoring evidence on airborne transmission and would update advice "where necessary". The organisations involved represent a wide range of health professionals, from doctors and nurses to dieticians and physiotherapists. Their approach to Downing Street follows repeated efforts to raise the issue with others in government. With health and care workers at three to four times greater risk of becoming infected than the general public, the plea to Boris Johnson is to make an "urgent intervention to prevent further loss of life". It says current policies focus on contaminated surfaces and droplets - for which the best defences are hand hygiene and social distancing - but not on airborne transmission by tiny infectious aerosols. The groups are demanding: ventilation is improved better respiratory protection, such as FFP3 masks, are provided healthcare guidance reflects the evidence of airborne transmission. Read full story Source: BBC News, 19 February 2021
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Content ArticleA research study with 20,000 people found people who read the advice in Germ Defence are less likely to catch viruses. If they do become ill, the illness is likely to be less severe. Germ Defence has been developed by health experts in UK universities.
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News Article
Covid coughing study suggests NHS staff at far greater risk than thought
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The NHS has been urged to rethink safety for thousands of frontline staff after new research suggested that Covid patients’ coughing is putting them at far greater risk of catching the virus than previously thought. The study found that coughing generated at least 10 times more infectious “aerosol” particles than speaking or breathing – which could explain why so many NHS staff have fallen ill during the pandemic. The research has led to fresh demands that anyone caring for someone with Covid-19, or suspected Covid-19, should be provided with the most protective equipment – including FFP3 respirator masks – and that hospital ventilation should be improved. Health workers are up to four times more likely to contract coronavirus than the general population, with infection rates among those on general hospital wards approximately double those of intensive care unit (ICU) staff – who do have access to the most protective PPE. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 3 January 2021 -
Content Article
Vaccination centres: minimising the risks to vulnerable people
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Blogs
Jane Carthey, Human Factors and Patient Safety Specialist, shares her reflections on COVID-19 vaccination centres and the risk they may present for covid transmission. -
News ArticlePeople who recover from coronavirus have a similar level of protection against future infection as those who receive a Covid vaccine – at least for the first five months, research suggests. A Public Health England (PHE) study of more than 20,000 healthcare workers found that immunity acquired from an earlier Covid infection provided 83% protection against reinfection for at least 20 weeks. The findings show that while people are unlikely to become reinfected soon after their first infection, it is possible to catch the virus again and potentially spread it to others. “Overall I think this is good news,” said Prof Susan Hopkins, a senior medical adviser to PHE. “It allows people to feel that prior infection will protect them from future infections, but at the same time it is not complete protection, and therefore they still need to be careful when they are out and about.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 14 January 2021 Public Health England press release
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News ArticleDeaths from COVID-19 in England in the first half of 2021 could exceed those seen in the whole of 2020 unless the vaccination programme is vastly increased and a national lockdown implemented—with educational settings closed for at least a month—researchers have warned. In a preprint released on 24 December, researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used modelling to compare the effects of varying COVID-19 restrictions on the virus spread, hospital and intensive care admissions, and deaths from 15 December 2020 to 30 June 2021. The model took account of the new variant spreading rapidly in southern England, which it estimated to be 56% more transmissible than non-variant COVID-19. The study, which has yet to be peer reviewed, said that control measures similar to the November national lockdown would be “unlikely to reduce the effective reproduction number to less than 1, unless primary schools, secondary schools, and universities are also closed.” It added that it would be necessary to “greatly accelerate vaccine rollout to have an appreciable impact in suppressing the resulting disease burden.” Read full story Source: BMJ, 29 December 2020
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News Article
Hospital acquired covid infections hit record high
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The number of COVID-19 infections likely to have been acquired in hospital are rising again for the first time in three weeks and their proportion of all cases has reached record levels for the second wave, HSJ can reveal. NHS England data covering the week to 6 December (the latest available) shows 1,787 COVID-19 cases were acquired in-hospital – a rise of almost 14% on the week before. The number of hospital-acquired, or “nosocomial”, infections had been falling since the week to 15 November, when 1,794 were recorded. This week, hospital acquired covid infections amounted to 21% of the 8,337 new cases which were recorded in hospitals – the highest proportion in the second wave. On 6 December alone, 24% of infections had probably been acquired in hospital rather than the community. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 11 December 2020 -
News Article
Inspectors moving between Covid-hit England care homes without tests
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Health inspectors in England have been moving between care homes with high levels of COVID-19 infection without being tested, raising fears they have put more residents at risk of catching the virus, leaks to the Guardian have revealed. In recent weeks all care home inspections carried out in the north of England have been of infected homes, including a facility where 38 of the 41 people receiving care and 30 staff – almost half of the workers – had tested positive, internal documents from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) show. Over the last two months inspectors have been checking infection control procedures and care standards in up to 600 care homes, many of which were dealing with outbreaks of COVID-19, but the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has yet to provide testing. The CQC said on Friday it was expecting to start testing inspectors “in the coming weeks”. Weekly Covid deaths in care homes have been rising. In the week to 20 November, 398 people were notified to the CQC as having died from Covid, up from 138 a month earlier. The death toll remains lower than at the peak of the pandemic, when more than 2,500 people were dying a week in late April. The situation has sparked “very real anxieties about contracting the disease” and spreading it between infected homes, the leaked memos reveal. One inspector described work to his managers as like “going into the eye of the storm”. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 27 November 2020 -
News Article
Coronavirus: Doctors spell out how to exit England's lockdown
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Lifting lockdown must be handled better this time round to avoid a surge in Covid that could overwhelm the NHS, doctors say. The British Medical Association has published a blueprint for how it thinks England should proceed with any easing. It includes replacing the "rule of six" with a two-households restriction to reduce social mixing and banning travel between different local lockdown tiers. Government has yet to say if or exactly how England will exit on 2 December. It will decide next week, based on whether cases have fallen enough and how much strain hospitals are under. Read full story Source: BBC News, 18 November 2020 -
News Article
Physician predicts 'unprecedented surge' in US COVID-19 cases after Thanksgiving
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Coronavirus cases in the US will spike after Thanksgiving, further stressing health care systems and prompting new restrictions, an emergency physician said Saturday, as states continued to report soaring numbers of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Dr. James Phillips, chief of disaster medicine at George Washington University Hospital, told CNN's Erica Hill he is "terrified" about what's going to happen this holiday season. "We're going to see an unprecedented surge of cases following Thanksgiving this year, and if people don't learn from Thanksgiving, we're going to see it after Christmas as well," Phillips said. Already, grim indicators offer a glimpse of what's to come. A little more than a week after the US first topped 100,000 daily infections, it reported a record of more than 184,000 new cases Friday. Hospitalisations also hit a new high – for the fourth consecutive day – with more than 68,500 COVID-19 patients nationwide, according to the COVID Tracking Project. And the country's daily death toll has topped 1,300 at least three times this week. "Things are going to get much, much worse," said Dr. Leana Wen, a CNN medical analyst and former Baltimore Health Commissioner. She expressed concern over the impact on the already-strained health care system when the new cases added in recent days are reflected in hospitalisations. Read full story Source: CNN, 15 November 2020 -
Content ArticleDr John Campbell, a retired A&E nurse, discusses the current news, research and evidence on COVID-19 in the US and UK, the new coronavirus cases linked to mink farms, and free supplies of vitamin D to care home residents and clinically extremely vulnerable people in England.
