Hospital infections have increased due to COVID-19

It is one of the most common complications when a person has to stay in the hospital for a long time. Hospital infections mainly affect the elderly and those with weakened immune systems due to pre-existing conditions. And these are precisely those who are most at risk of developing severe symptoms of COVID-19 and requiring hospitalization.

On the occasion of the pandemic, in the United States found that after years of steadily reducing hospital-acquired infections, rates became significantly higher for four of six routine follow-up infections in US hospitals.

This was demonstrated by an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of data from the National Health Security Network (NHSN) published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society of Sanitary Epidemiology of America.

The increases have been attributed to factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including more patients and sicker patients requiring more frequent and prolonged use of catheters and respirators, as well as personnel and supply issues.

“COVID-19 has created a perfect storm for antibiotic resistance and nosocomial infections in healthcare facilities. Before the pandemic, public health – in collaboration with hospitals – had managed to reduce these infections for several years in hospitals in the United States ”. Dr Arjun Srinivasan is CDC associate director for health care associated infection prevention programs, noting that “building infection prevention and control capacity works.”

That’s why, for him, “this information underscores the importance of creating stronger, deeper, and broader infection control resources in healthcare that will not only improve our ability to protect patients in future pandemics.” , but they will also improve patient care every day. “

For this analysis, the researchers used data collected through the NHSN, the nation’s largest hospital-acquired infection surveillance system, which is used by nearly every hospital in the United States to meet local, state or federal infection reporting requirements.

Significant increases were observed in 2020 compared to 2019 in four types of serious infections: blood infections associated with central catheters, urinary tract infections associated with catheters, events associated with ventilation and resistant staphylococcal infections. antibiotics.

According to an expert analysis, “the biggest increases have been infections of the blood associated with central line catheters which are inserted into large blood vessels to deliver drugs and other fluids for long periods of time.” Meanwhile, central line infection rates were 46% to 47% higher in the third and fourth quarters of 2020 compared to 2019.

With the drastic increase in the frequency and duration of ventilator use, rates of ventilator-associated infections increase by 45% in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to 2019. The CDC’s analysis found large increases in standardized infection rates, indicating that the increases were not simply a reflection of more devices being used.

In contrast, surgical site infections and Clostridioid difficile (C. diff), a serious bacterial infection that occurs after antibiotic use, remained stable. According to the study, the drop in C. diff levels may be the result of increased attention to hand hygiene, environmental cleanliness, patient isolation and the use of ‘personal protective equipment.

“Infection control practices in COVID-19 wards were often adapted to the shortage of personal protective equipment, they responded to the fear of health workers and did not always lend themselves to better infection prevention, ”said Tara N. Palmore and David K. Henderson of the National Institutes of Health in an editorial accompanying the study.

The success of previous years, with constant declines in the rates of these nosocomial and device-related infections, “further accentuated the rebound that occurred in 2020”.

The study found that two other types of infections were stable or declined during the COVID-19 pandemic. Surgical site infection rates did not increase as fewer elective surgeries were performed, primarily in operating rooms with uninterrupted infection control processes that were separate from the departments of coronavirus patients.

“Basic infection control practices need to be built into practice so that they are less vulnerable when the health care system is under strain,” the editorial concluded. For the researchers, one approach could be to “appoint clinical staff to join the hospital’s epidemiology team to enable rapid scaling up of efforts in support of a pandemic response.”

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