A retrospective analysis conducted on hospital-acquired respiratory infections during the COVID-19 pandemic concluded that the implementation of stringent prevention and control measures significantly reduced the incidence of such infections.
The research was conducted using the clinical data of adult patients admitted from October to December in 2019 and during the same period in 2020, referred from a general hospital in Beijing, China, that didn’t treat COVID-19 patients. The study established the diagnoses based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/National Healthcare Safety Network (CDC/NHSN) criteria and observed a substantial decrease in the incidence of hospital-acquired respiratory infections following the COVID-19 protection measures.
The results also revealed that a history of previous malignancy was linked to higher in-hospital mortality in older inpatients with hospital-acquired respiratory infections. The comparative study demonstrated that the incidence of hospital-acquired respiratory infections in 2019 (pre-COVID-19 pandemic) was 4.7% and 2.9% in 2020 (during the pandemic).
Furthermore, the study highlighted the significant disruption the COVID-19 pandemic has caused globally since January 2020. Protection and control measures were strictly enforced by the Chinese government to curtail COVID-19 transmission. The particular focus was on medical institutions, where high-risk individuals were prone to infection.
This finding underpins the effectiveness of infection control measures not just in mitigating the spread of COVID-19, but also in limiting the transmission of other hospital-acquired respiratory infections. The analysis also sheds light on the need for further research on the impact of COVID-19 prevention and control measures on the prevalence of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs).
Source: https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-024-09779-y