IP 2 0 2 1 R EVIEW
Focusing on the fundamentals
At IP2021, experts highlighted the need to ‘move forward’, following an intense period of battling COVID-19, and to re-focus on core infection prevention and control (IP&C) issues. While it is important to learn lessons from the pandemic, we also need to view IP&C through a ‘new lens’ and consider the fundamentals of nursing care.
The Infection Prevention Society (IPS) recently hosted its first face-to-face congress since the start of the pandemic. This year’s event was set to be a poignant one, marking the beginning of a return to a new ‘normal’, and prompting discussion on how we should “move forward”. Opening the conference, IPS president, Professor Jennie Wilson, described the moment as “emotional”. She acknowledged the impact of the pandemic has had, and that many will have lost loved ones. As far back as 2011, the WHO warned that the World was “ill prepared to respond to a severe influenza pandemic or to any similarly global, sustained and threatening public-health emergency”. Despite WHO’s warning going unheeded, there have also been some extraordinary achievements in tackling the pandemic. Prof. Wilson went on to highlight the pioneering work that has been undertaken in developing several effective vaccines, at an incredible speed, to fight the virus. The vaccines offer around 90% protection against mortality and just 0.5% of deaths due to COVID occurred in fully vaccinated people (Jan-July 2021). Vaccination is also 90% effective against hospitalisation. Prof. Wilson praised the huge efforts of the researchers but warned that there is still work to be done.
“The COVID vaccine is very effective, but there is still a gap in vaccination. As infection prevention practitioners, we need to continue to tackle that gap and make people realise that it is a life saver,” she urged. She pointed out that the vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccine,
We need to go back to reinforcing the role of hand hygiene in preventing transmission of infections. Infection control is much bigger than a single respiratory infection – there are so many things that we, as specialists,
need to know to drive improvement. Professor Jennie Wilson, IPS president.
DECEMBER 2021
for example, which is around 40%-50%. Furthermore, the coverage rate for the COVID vaccine is also impressive compared to other vaccines. “We have come a long way, but this doesn’t mean it is the end,” Prof. Wilson continued. “We must not forget that the rest of the world needs to be vaccinated – especially in countries that do not have our resources.” Prof. Wilson referred to Prof. Dame Sarah
Gilbert, who led the development of the AstraZeneca vaccine. She had previously told a Royal Society of Medicine webinar that the virus will “weaken over time and become like other coronaviruses” and pointed out that we already live with four human coronaviruses that we don’t give much thought to. Eventually Sars-CoV-2 will become one of those. “The question is, how long will it take us
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©konstantin yuganov
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