The Journal of hospital infection
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Inferring super-spreading from transmission clusters of COVID-19 in Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore.
Super-spreading events in an outbreak can change the nature of an epidemic. Therefore, it is useful for public health teams to determine whether an ongoing outbreak has any contribution from such events, which may be amenable to interventions. ⋯ This allowed us to infer the presence or absence of super-spreading events during the early phase of these outbreaks. The relatively large values of k implied that large cluster sizes, compatible with super-spreading, were unlikely.
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Single-use filtering face respirators (FFRs) are critical pieces of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers treating patients with suspected upper respiratory tract pathogens. Experiences during pandemics in the 2000s, as well as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-2-CoV-2, have highlighted concerns over the pressures that sustained respiratory virus pandemics may have on supplies of FFRs globally. Decontamination of FFRs has been posited as one solution to support the re-use of FFRs with a growing body of literature over the last 10+ years beginning to examine both the efficacy of disinfection of contaminated FFRs but also the impact of the decontamination process on the FFR's performance. ⋯ The performance of the filter, especially the efficiency of particle penetration following treatment, varied greatly depending on the processing method as well as the model of the filter itself, however. Urgent regulatory body-supported research is required to endorse the routine decontamination of FFRs. In emergency settings, these methods should nevertheless be carefully considered as one strategy to address potential shortfalls in supplies of FFRs for healthcare workers.
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In response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a rapid-cycle in-situ simulation (ISS) programme was developed to facilitate identification and resolution of systems-based latent safety threats. The simulation involved a possible COVID-19 case in respiratory failure, using a mannequin modified to aerosolize phosphorescent secretions. ⋯ These threats were addressed and resolved in later iterations. Ninety-four percent of participants felt more prepared to care for a potential case of COVID-19 after the ISS.
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An exceptionally high demand for surgical masks and N95 filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs) during the COVID-19 pandemic has considerably exceeded their supply. These disposable devices are generally not approved for routine decontamination and re-use as a standard of care, while this practice has widely occurred in hospitals. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowed it "as a crisis capacity strategy". However, limited testing was conducted on the impact of specific decontamination methods on the performance of N95 FFRs and no data was presented for surgical masks. ⋯ Strategies advocating decontamination and re-use of filtering facepieces in hospitals should be re-assessed considering the data obtained in this study.