Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

10 INFECTION CONTROL Why did fl u, COVID-19 'twindemic' never happen? 1 explanation By Mackenzie Bean D espite public health experts' fears about coinciding surges of fl u and COVID-19 engulfi ng the country, a so-called "twindemic" never materialized. Now, scien- tists are considering a theory that could explain why, The New York Times reported April 8. Masks, social distancing and other public health measures rolled out to contain the coronavirus's spread may have played a role in fending off fl u and other respiratory virus- es during the pandemic. But scientists are also pondering whether a biological phenomenon known as viral interfer- ence was at play. The theory is that exposure to one respiratory virus may put the body at high alert and amplify its ability to fi ght off other viruses. As a result, only one virus could gain dominance in a region at a time. "My gut feeling, and my feeling based on our recent re- search, is that viral interference is real," Ellen Foxman, MD, PhD, an immunologist at New Haven, Conn.-based Yale School of Medicine, told the Times. "I don't think we're going to see the fl u and the coronavirus peak at the same time." That said, hospitals can still become overburdened even if a twindemic doesn't occur, Dr. Foxman said. n CDC: COVID-19 surveillance efforts in wildlife 'now critical' By Erica Carbajal T he CDC has removed an earlier rec- ommendation from its animal testing guidance webpage that said state health offi cials could "avoid routine animal testing" as concerns grow over the potential for new coronavirus variants to emerge in animals and spread back to humans, CBS News reported April 11. "Given our current state of knowledge in the pandemic, we have updated CDC's 'Evalu- ation for SARS-CoV-2 Testing in Animals' to refl ect that surveillance eff orts are now critical for early detection and prevention of virus spillover from animals, specifi cally wildlife, to people," CDC spokesperson Jasmine Reed told CBS. e guidance is part of the agency's One Health initiative, focused on connections among hu- man, animal and environmental health. "One of CDC's primary One Health concerns is the establishment of a North American animal reservoir in which the virus could 'hide,' mutate, and potentially re-emerge as a new variant in the human population," Ms. Reed said in a statement to CBS. e CDC said the risk of animals spreading COVID-19 to people is low. e agency's guidance shi follows pre- liminary fi ndings published in February in which researchers documented what they believe is the fi rst instance of a human contracting COVID-19 from a white-tailed deer in Canada. Health experts in the U.S. have largely focused surveillance eff orts on white-tailed deer, of which there are 30 million in the continental U.S. So far, sur- veillance eff orts have indicated deer appear to be alone in spreading the coronavirus in the wild. "We also are starting to see effi cient deer- to-deer transmission," said Jeff Bender, pro- fessor in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. "In other words, when deer get it, we're actually seeing that it actually seems to adapt to the deer and that, because of their nature, in congregations together that they can actual- ly spread," he told the news outlet. n Urological endoscopes recalled, new sterilization instructions required: FDA By Mackenzie Bean T he FDA is alerting healthcare providers to a re- call and change in reprocessing instructions for certain urological endoscopes manufactured by Karl Storz. The company recalled various cystoscopes, uretero- scopes, cystourethroscopes and ureterorenoscopes April 1 after identifying several reprocessing issues. Karl Storz is instructing healthcare providers to dis- continue all high-level disinfection methods for the endoscopes. Liquid chemical sterilization should also not be used for some devices. "The FDA will continue to work with Karl Storz to eval- uate the root cause of reprocessing failures and to ensure that an adequate supply of urological endo- scopes are available for users and patient care," the agency said April 4. The company will also provide updated sterilization instructions for affected endoscopes. n "Surveillance eff orts are now critical for early detection and prevention of virus spillover from animals." Jasmine Reed, CDC

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