Informing pandemic management in Germany with trustworthy living evidence syntheses and guideline development: lessons learned from the COVID-19 evidence ecosystem.

Objectives: We present the 'COVID-19 evidence ecosystem' (CEOsys) as a German network to inform pandemic management and to support clinical and public health decision-making. We discuss challenges faced when organizing the ecosystem and derive lessons learned for similar networks acting during pandemics or health-related crises.

Study Design And Setting: Bringing together 18 university hospitals and additional institutions, CEOsys key activities included research prioritization, conducting living systematic reviews (LSRs), supporting evidence-based (living) guidelines, knowledge translation (KT), detecting research gaps, and deriving recommendations, backed by technical infrastructure and capacity building.

Is virtual reality suitable for hand hygiene training in health care workers? Evaluating an application for acceptability and effectiveness.

Background: For effective prevention of nosocomial transmissions continuous training and motivation of health care workers (HCW) are essential to maintain and increase compliance with high rates of hand hygiene. The use of Virtual Reality (VR) seems to be a contemporary and interesting approach for hand hygiene training in HCW. Nevertheless, HCW should be asked for their preferences as intrinsic motivation is essential for compliance with hand hygiene and training success should be evaluated.

Does the Reprocessing of Endoscopes Have to Take Place Immediately after Pre-Cleaning? A First Evaluation.

Background/aims: The recommendations on the time interval between pre-cleaning and reprocessing of endoscopes differ in international guidelines, with a low level of evidence. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of postponing reprocessing on the reprocessing quality after pre-cleaning the flexible endoscopes.

Methods: We reprocessed 124 standardized test tubes simulating endoscope channels after soiling and contamination and determined the reprocessing performance.

Infection control, prophylactic antibiotics, and testing for SARS-CoV-2 and PPE on German intensive care units: results from a national mixed methods survey.

Recommendations on hygiene measures, personal protective equipment (PPE), isolation, and antibiotic prophylaxis were developed during the coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19) pandemic and have been revised several times to date. Some of the underlying literature indicates a large evidence gap. We suspect that this leads to a large variance of measures on German intensive care units (ICU).