COVID-19: a primer for healthcare providers

Infection Control in the Era of COVID-19: A Narrative Review

COVID-19 quickly became a pandemic causing millions of infections and mortalities. It required real-time adjustments to healthcare systems and infection prevention and control (IPC) measures to limit the spread and protect healthcare providers and hospitalized patients. IPC guidelines were adopted and developed based on experience gained during the MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV outbreaks. The aim of this narrative review is to summarize current evidence on IPC in healthcare settings and patients with COVID-19 to prevent nosocomial infections during the actual pandemic. A search was run on PubMed using the terms (‘COVID-19’ [Mesh]) AND (‘Infection Control’ [Mesh]) between 2019 and 2021. We identified 86 studies that were in accordance with our aim and summarized them under certain themes as they related to COVID-19 infection control measures. All the guidelines recommend early diagnosis and rapid isolation of COVID-19 patients. The necessary precautions should be taken comprising the whole process, starting with an infectious disease plan, administrative and engineering controls, triage, and PPE training. Guidelines should target modes of transmission, droplet, aerosol, and oral–fecal, while recommending control precautions. Healthcare facilities must promptly implement a multidisciplinary defense system to combat the outbreak.

New insights and antimicrobial stewardship opportunities in viral pneumonia: five lung ultrasound cases

Background

Antimicrobial stewardship is crucial to avoid antimicrobial resistance in microbes and adverse drug effects in patients. In respiratory infections, however, viral pneumonia is difficult to distinguish from bacterial pneumonia, which explains the overuse of antibiotic therapy in this indication.

Cases

Five cases of lung consolidation are presented. Lung ultrasound, in conjunction with procalcitonin levels, were used to exclude or corroborate bacterial pneumonia.

Conclusion

Lung ultrasound is easy to learn and perform and is helpful in guiding diagnosis in unclear cases of pneumonia and may also offer new insights into the spectrum of certain virus diseases. The use of lung ultrasound can raise awareness in clinicians of the need for antimicrobial stewardship and may help to avoid the unnecessary use of antibiotics.

Supplementary Information

The online version of this article (10.1007/s00508-021-01946-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.