Am J Infect Control. 2021 Dec 28:S0196-6553(21)00852-X. doi: 10.1016/j.ajic.2021.12.018. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a considerable impact leading to increases in healthcare-associated infections, particularly bloodstream infections (BSI).
METHODS: We evaluated the impact of COVID-19 in 69 US hospitals on BSIs before and during the pandemic. Events associated with 5 pathogens (Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Candida sp.) were stratified by community onset (CO) if ≤ 3 days from admission or hospital onset (HO) if >3 days after admission. We compared pre-pandemic CO and HO rates with pandemic periods and the rates of BSI for those with and without COVID-19.
RESULTS: COVID-19 patients were less likely to be admitted with COBSI compared to others (10.85 vs. 22.35 per 10,000 patient days; p<0.0001). There was a significant increase between pre-pandemic and pandemic HOBSI rates (2.78 vs. 3.56 per 10,000 patient days; p<0.0001). Also, COVID-19 infected patients were 3.5 times more likely to develop HOBSI compared to those without COVID-19 infection (9.64 vs. 2.74 per 10,000 patient-days; p<0.0001).
CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 pandemic period was associated with substantial increases in HOBSI and largely attributed to COVID-19 infected patients. Future research should evaluate whether such measures would be beneficial to incorporate in evaluating infection prevention trends.
PMID:34971717 | PMC:PMC8714610 | DOI:10.1016/j.ajic.2021.12.018