Becker's Hospital Review

96 CMO / CARE DELIVERY Public health expert says new CDC data shows need for hospital-acquired COVID-19 reporting By Molly Gamble R oughly nine weeks' of previously unpub- lished federal data provided to e Wall Street Journal in mid-September re- vealed an average of 120 patients a day contract- ed the new coronavirus inside U.S. hospitals. e figure comes from data reported by half of U.S. hospitals to the CDC between May 14 and July 14, aer which data is unavailable be- cause the government changed its data collec- tion system and dropped the question about new cases of hospital-acquired COVID-19. In that timeframe, more than 7,400 patients likely caught COVID-19 in hospitals where they sought care for other conditions. e CDC data didn't track infections among hos- pital staff. Ashish Jha, MD, dean of Brown University's School of Public Health in Providence, R.I., told the WSJ the data shows the need for fed- eral authorities to revive reporting require- ments for new cases of hospital-acquired COVID-19. "We need to know this," he said. e WSJ also points out that the CDC data doesn't specify the location of reporting hos- pitals, and the pandemic has hit different re- gions of the U.S. at different times. A separate published analysis from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston showed that over a 12-week period, two patients contract- ed COVID-19 inside the hospital. Researchers credit the hospital's rigorous infec- tion control measures for the low COVID-19 transmission, which hospital leaders told the WSJ are critical to ensure patients do not avoid medical appointments and care mov- ing forward. "at is the bigger public health risk," Meghan Baker, MD, epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, told the WSJ. n Acute kidney injury boosts death risk in COVID-19 patients, Northwell study finds By Mackenzie Bean A bout 40 percent of adult COVID-19 patients hospitalized at New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health experienced acute kidney injury this spring, according to research from Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, the system's research arm. Researchers examined the outcomes of 9,657 adult COVID-19 pa- tients admitted to 13 hospitals in the New York metropolitan area between March 1 and April 27. The overall incidence rate of acute kidney injury was 38.4 per 1,000 patient-days. The in-hospital death rate for COVID-19 patients without acute kid- ney injury was 10.8 per 1,000 patient days. This figure rose to 31.1 for patients who had acute kidney injury but did not need dialysis and 37.5 for patients who needed dialysis. The risk of death still remained higher among patients with acute kidney injury when researchers adjusted for demographics, comor- bidities and illness severity. Among acute kidney injury patients who did not need dialysis, 74 percent recovered kidney function by the time they were dis- charged. Among acute kidney injury patients who required dialysis, 30.6 percent still needed the therapy after discharge. Chronic kid- ney disease was the only risk factor associated with needing dialysis upon discharge, researchers found. More research is needed to un- derstand the outcomes of these patients, they said. The study was accepted for publication in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases. n Michigan reports suspected human case of equine encephalitis illness By Anuja Vaidya T he Michigan Department of Health and Human Services reported Sept. 18 a suspected human case of East- ern equine encephalitis, a rare but dangerous mosquito-borne virus. There is no vaccine to protect humans from the virus, which has a 33 percent fatality rate in peo- ple who become ill. People can be infected with the virus from a mosquito bite, and those young- er than 15 and older than 50 are at greatest risk of severe disease. Symptoms of the disease include fever and joint or muscle pain and may progress to chills, head- ache and vomiting. Those with severe cases may develop encephalitis (swelling of the brain) or meningitis (swelling of the membranes that sur- round the brain and spinal cord). Typically, an average of 11 human cases of East- ern equine encephalitis are reported annually in the U.S., but last year the number of cases shot up to 38. More than 25 percent of the nation's Eastern equine encephalitis cases last year were diagnosed in Michigan. n

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