Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

6 INFECTION CONTROL Why medical professionals disagree on when the next pandemic will be By Ashleigh Hollowell T hirty-eight percent of medical professionals told Becker's they believe the next pandemic may be less than five years away, according to the results of a June LinkedIn poll. irty-six percent said it could be more than 10 years away. e remaining 26 percent fell in the middle. e question received 751 answers in total, along with 10 comments that revealed starkly differing opinions. Several of the public comments revealed that the issue continues to be overtly polarizing politically for some, even in the healthcare industry. "Whenever they decide to plan it," Juliana Hanbridge, RN, MSN, a nursing instructor at the University of South Carolina commented. "Is there a rate for 'pandemics' at's a question to be watched," Ayman Stephanos, MD, a fellow of the European Board of Urology commented. "Anyway, with [American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers] guidelines, a future pandemic shouldn't be as bad as it was in COVID-19. Next time: remember, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." For perspective on the results, Becker's looped in infectious disease expert Rebecca Wurtz, MD, a professor in the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in Minneapolis, which is also home to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. "I would say is that it's 2023 and in the last 20 years we've seen — starting with SARS in 2003, then H1N1 in 2009 and of course COVID in 2020 — So in 20 years, we've had three pandemics declared by the WHO," Dr. Wurtz said. "at's an average of every six and a half years or so. I think the people who said somewhere in the middle, within the next five to 10 years, are based on history most likely to be right." She explained her personal take on the question would be closer to the five-year mark and pointed out that "there's no natural reason why it couldn't be less than five years," either. As for individuals who responded that another pandemic is likely to be further than 10 years away, Dr. Wurtz said that school of thought could range from politics, profession within healthcare or even a more optimistic view looking back at the COVID response of the healthcare sector. "ere are also definitely a lot of people in public health who have retired since the pandemic, and we're still in sort of a leadership vacuum that's slowly being filled," she said. "But it wasn't medicine that went wrong during COVID. Medicine and healthcare did a fantastic job in difficult circumstances. It was public health that didn't succeed, and I think hasn't been fixed. So for the 36 percent who said it may be more than 10 years away, they might be healthcare professionals who think that we've learned the lessons we needed to or have a more optimistic worldview. But from everything I can tell, it's probably more likely in the middle between six and nine years." n What does heat have to do with COVID-19? By Molly Gamble It's a good question. Cold weather was commonly cited as a contributing factor to previous upturns in COVID-19 infections, inviting curiosity about extreme heat's influence on the current uptick, according to Bloomberg. COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. rose 43 percent in the last week in July from a low in the week ending June 24, according to CDC data. ere were 9,056 new COVID-19 hospitalizations for the week ending July 29, marking a 12.5 percent jump from the week prior. New Hampshire, Vermont, Kansas and South Dakota saw the greatest climbs in hospitalizations in that time. Coincidentally, July 2023 marked Earth's hottest month on record, with heat spilling over into August. In the U.S., prolonged heat waves have blanketed large swaths of the country and likely drove people CDC's new flu shot guidelines: 1 key change to know By Erica Carbajal T he CDC updated its annual flu shot recommendations Aug. 23, with experts noting one key change: People with egg allergies can now get any flu vaccine, egg- based or non-egg based. The guidelines are "pretty standard," with the exception of the egg allergy recommendation, Thomas Russo, MD, chief of infectious diseases at the University at Buffalo in New York, told Yahoo. The previous recommendation for people with severe egg allergies was to avoid egg-based vaccines. "There was data supporting this change which showed that people with egg allergies don't have a major contraindication to egg-based flu vaccine," Andrea Garcia, vice president of science, medicine and public health at the American Medical Association, said in a recent podcast. Annual flu vaccination is recommended for most people 6 months and older between September and October. n

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