Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1468749
26 PATIENT SAFETY & OUTCOMES Nearly 60% of Americans have had COVID-19: CDC By Mackenzie Bean M ore than half of people living in the U.S. had contracted COVID-19 as of February, including 75 percent of chil- dren, according to an April 29 CDC report. The CDC analyzed antibody levels from blood samples collected between September 2021 and February 2022 as part of the agency's na- tional commercial laboratory seroprevalence study. Overall, antibody presence jumped from 33.5 percent in December 2021 to 57.7 percent in February, driven by the highly contagious omicron variant. About 75 percent of children and adolescents had antibodies as of February, about one-third of whom developed antibodies after omicron gained a foothold in December. The CDC noted that convenience sampling might limit the research's generalizability. The figures may also be an underestimate, as COVID-19 infections after vaccination might result in lower antibody levels, and antibody testing cannot discern between new infections and reinfections. n Mayo Clinic rolls out program for recovery outside hospital By Katie Adams M ayo Clinic launched a program called Monitoring at Charter House, which allows surgery patients to recover in an apart- ment near the system's flagship hospital in Rochester, Minn. Under the program, physicians arrange for patients who meet certain criteria to recover overnight at an apartment rather than in the hospital. The apartments are outfitted with remote monitoring technology, and patients can press a button to connect to their care team at any time by phone or video call, according to an April 6 news release. "It provides a solution for those patients who are too sick to go home after surgery but not so sick they need to be in the hospital," Mayo Clinic neurosurgeon Mohamad Bydon, MD, said in the release. "With this program, we are able to offer the right care in the right setting for the right patient. Because the patient is more comfort- able, it helps speed recovery." Dr. Bydon also said the program frees hospital beds for patients who are sicker or have more complex needs. The program is a collaboration between Mayo Clinic Hospital-Roch- ester and Mayo Clinic Advanced Care at Home, which is part of the Mayo Clinic Center for Digital Health. Mayo Clinic said Monitoring at Charter House established "the same concept" as Mayo Clinic's Hybrid Care Hotel in Jacksonville, Fla., which also offers low-risk surgical patients a chance to recover outside the hospital setting. n COVID-19 booster protection against hospitalization wanes, Kaiser study finds By Erica Carbajal P rotection against hospitalization aer a booster dose of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine wanes aer three months, according to a study led by researchers at Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente. The findings, published April 22 in The Lancet Respiratory Med- icine, showed a booster dose was about 80 percent to 90 percent effective at preventing hospital admissions and emergency de- partment visits caused by delta and omicron within three months of receiving the shot. After three months, protection against hospitalization caused by omicron fell to about 55 percent, while protection against ED visits that did not result in hospitalization fell to 53 percent. The study used Kaiser Permanente patient records from De- cember 2021 through Feb. 6, 2022. Researchers analyzed 11,123 hospital admissions and ED visits that did not result in admission for acute respiratory infection. "Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 booster doses significantly improve protection against omicron, although that protection seems to wane aer three months against emergency room visits, and even for hos- pitalization," said Sara Tartof, PhD, lead study author and epidemi- ologist at the health system's department of research and evaluation in Southern California. "Trends in waning against delta-related outcomes were generally similar to omicron but with higher effec- tiveness at each time point than those seen for omicron." n