Efficacy of air cleaning units for preventing SARS-CoV-2 and other hospital-acquired infections on medicine for older people wards: a quasi-experimental controlled before-and-after study.

Background: Nosocomial infections are costly, and airborne transmission is increasingly recognized as important for spread. Air cleaning units (ACUs) may reduce transmission, but little research has focused on their effectiveness on open wards.

Aim: To assess whether ACUs reduce nosocomial severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), or other, infections on older adult inpatient wards.

Evaluating the impact of genomic epidemiology of methicillin-resistant (MRSA) on hospital infection prevention and control decisions.

Genomic epidemiology enhances the ability to detect and refute methicillin-resistant (MRSA) outbreaks in healthcare settings, but its routine introduction requires further evidence of benefits for patients and resource utilization. We performed a 12 month prospective study at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in the UK to capture its impact on hospital infection prevention and control (IPC) decisions. MRSA-positive samples were identified via the hospital microbiology laboratory between November 2018 and November 2019.

Impact of supplementary air filtration on aerosols and particulate matter in a UK hospital ward: a case study.

Background: Aerosol spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a major problem in hospitals, leading to an increase in supplementary high-efficiency particulate air filtration aimed at reducing nosocomial transmission. This article reports a natural experiment that occurred when an air cleaning unit (ACU) on a medicine for older people ward was switched off accidentally while being commissioned.

Aim: To assess aerosol transport within the ward and determine whether the ACU reduced airborne particulate matter (PM) levels.

Large-Scale Evaluation of a Rapid Fully Automated Analysis Platform to Detect and Refute Outbreaks Based on MRSA Genome Comparisons.

Genomic epidemiology of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) could transform outbreak investigations, but its clinical introduction is hampered by the lack of automated data analysis tools to rapidly and accurately define transmission based on sequence relatedness. We aimed to evaluate a fully automated bioinformatics system for MRSA genome analysis versus a bespoke researcher-led manual informatics pipeline. We analyzed 781 MRSA genomes from 777 consecutive patients identified over a 9-month period in a clinical microbiology laboratory in the United Kingdom.