Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1491534
5 INFECTION CONTROL Providence, HealthPartners team up with Helix to monitor respiratory viruses By Mackenzie Bean T he CDC has awarded Helix a $5 million contract to develop a pan-respiratory viral surveillance program with Renton, Wash.-based Providence and Bloomington, Minn.-based HealthPartners. e contract expands the CDC's partnership with the population genomics and viral surveillance company, which has already been helping the health agency track COVID-19 variants. e new viral surveillance "early warning program" will identify and track more than 30 respiratory viral variants, including flu, respiratory syncytial virus and SARS-CoV-2. Helix will also collect deidentified EHR data for up to 16,000 respiratory virus samples a year from Providence and HealthPartners. In return, the company will share viral sequencing data with the systems to help inform their own analyses. "Hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare providers continue to be on the front lines of the public health response to COVID-19 and must have information available to help us more readily prepare for future pandemics," Leslie Dockan, vice president of primary care, clinic operations and laboratories at HealthPartners, said in a Dec 15 news release. "As part of Helix's multi-site viral monitoring network, it allows health systems like ours to horizon scan and study our regional data to watch for growing variant trends and more effectively manage disease risk for our communities." n Catheters can trigger lurking A. baumannii, causing second infection: Study By Mariah Taylor S t. Louis-based Washington University School of Medicine researchers found Acinetobacter baumannii, an antibiotic- resistant bacterium responsible for many hospital-associated infections, can resurge aer a catheter insertion. e study, published in Science Translational Medicine on Jan. 11, used mice with urinary tract infections. Researchers infected mice with A. baumannii, which displayed high bacterial burdens in urine for several weeks. Two months aer resolving the infection, researchers inserted a catheter into the bladder. Approximately 53 percent of mice had a resurgence of a same-strain urinary tract infection within 24 hours. Researchers identified intracellular A. baumannii in the bladder epithelial cells of mice with resolved infections, which could act as a host reservoir. e reservoir can be activated when a catheter is inserted, leading to a resurgent infection. n Hybrid immunity offers 1 year of protection against COVID-19, study finds By Bari Faye Dean H ybrid immunity, the combination of COVID-19 recovery and immunization, provides up to 12 months of protection against severe reinfection or hospitalization, according to a study published in The Lancet on Jan. 18. People who had COVID-19 but were not immunized still have some immunity at the one-year mark, but the study showed infection alone provides less than 75 percent protection after recovery. The international study, funded by the World Health Organization, revealed hybrid immunity can prevent more than 97 percent of severe recurrences in the 12 months following infection or initial vaccination, whichever is most recent. Further, people who received COVID-19 boosters receive an additional six months of protection. The timing of vaccines and the necessity of boosters continues to be debated, a Bloomberg article points out. However, the findings of this new WHO study may be used to inform COVID-19 immunization going forward with regard to timing between boosters. Health officials can use the results of the study as they plan future vaccine and booster campaigns, as the research underscores the effectiveness of getting vaccinated and boosted even after being infected with COVID-19, the researchers said. n