COVID-19 and the elderly.

COVID-19 has become a great burden of the world in respect of health care, social, and economical reason. Several million people died worldwide so far and more and more mutants are generated and spread. Older people with co-morbidities and frailty syndrome have a significantly higher risk to get the infection and also higher the risk of a more serious disease process. Mortality of COVID-19 is also higher in case of geriatric patients. In this review we attempted to summarize the factors of the higher susceptibility for more serious disease, what actions need to be taken for defending older patients and also special aspects of clinical presentation including ophthalmic symptoms.

[Difficulties of epidemic measures in Fadd and Józsefváros]. / Járványügyi intézkedések nehézségei Faddon és Józsefvárosban.

Authors draw attention to their own experience about the occurrence and epidemic measures of tuberculosis in two micro-regions of Hungary, Fadd and Józsefváros situated far from each other. According to data from the National Statistical Office of Hungary, tuberculosis does not belong to the most significant causes of morbidity and mortality. However, it still represents a notable factor in national healthcare and public health. Currently, tuberculosis is not an important issue to be regulated by health care decision makers or at the level of legislation. Based on their own experience, authors suggest reconsidering the possibility of epidemic measures for the prevention of tuberculosis.

[Contribution of microbiology to an effective control of healthcare-associated infections]. / Mikrobiológiai értéktöbblet az infekciókontroll-centrum kialakításához.

An effective control of healthcare-associated infections is not realized without an intensive participation of microbiologic activities. Authors present the model of a centre for healthcare-associated infection control established in 2008 at Semmelweis University. The new model of the surveillance system is based on diagnostic and experimental microbiologic data. Clinical and epidemiological microbiologic examinations are performed in the same laboratory using identical methods, and the results are continually compared. Reports consist of two functional parts; namely list of pathogens isolated and antibiotic sensitivity patterns for clinicians and messages especially for epidemiologists including abbreviated information on bacteria of nosocomial importance. Rapid detection of the most important pathogens both from clinical samples and from those obtained for detecting nasal carriage is carried out by a sensitive and specific method of an automated real time PCR. Biotyping of isolates by detailed biochemical substrate spectrum, genotyping by ready-to-use kits depending on polymorphism of repetitive DNA sequences, and cluster analysis of data are used for up-to-date survey of nosocomial situation. Statistical analysis of reports is performed by the multifactorial software OSIRIS Epidemiology.