Infection prevention and control: Key measures in healthcare settings to reduce the spread of COVID-19 pandemic

Banerjee J, Bilolikar AK, Fatima R

Pdf Page Numbers :- 124-134

Jaya Banerjee^1,*, Anil Kumar Bilolikar¹ and Rafath Fatima¹

¹Department of Laboratory Medicine (Microbiology), Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences, Minister Road, Secunderabad-500003, Telangana, India.

*Corresponding author: Dr. Jaya Banerjee. MD (Microbiology), Department of Laboratory Medicine (Microbiology), Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences, Minister Road, Secunderabad-500003, Telangana, India. Email: jayasoham245@gmail.com

Received 21 September 2020; Revised 26 October 2020; Accepted 3 November 2020; Published 12 November 2020

Citation: Banerjee J, Bilolikar AK, Fatima R. Infection prevention and control: Key measures in healthcare settings to reduce the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. J Med Sci Res. 2020; 8(S1):124-134. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17727/JMSR.2020/8S1-16

Copyright: © 2020 Banerjee J et al. Published by KIMS Foundation and Research Center. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) poses an enormous burden on society, economic and healthcare systems worldwide. The various measures being taken to control its spread. It has no definitive treatment and vaccination till date. Therefore, Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) practice in the healthcare facilities is the most important and essential to combat this health crisis. The increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases among healthcare professionals along with evidence of ongoing transmission in some healthcare settings suggest the gaps in the implementation of IPC practice. This need reviewing of all guidelines and their appropriate implementation. Strategic preparedness of preventive measures within health-care facilities; their proper implementation; the continuous, correct & consistent performance of IPC measures and use of tools to identify IPC gaps & to monitor progress are the key features to achieve success in reducing the transmission of SARS-CoV2 virus.

Keywords: infection prevention and control (IPC); COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; pandemic, hand hygiene; cleaning and disinfection