Is It Possible to Prevent Sars-Cov-2 Infection in a Non-Infectious Diseases Ward during the Pandemic on the Example of a Diabetes Clinic Institute of Rural Health, Lublin, Poland?

Diabetes is considered an epidemic of the 21st century. On 11 March 2020, two months after the outbreak of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease of 2019) epidemic in China, the World Health Organization announced COVID-19 to be a pandemic. From that time, many hospitals and wards have started to function as both infectious and non-infectious ones; so did the Diabetes Clinic Institute of Rural Health in South-Eastern Poland. Considering the global importance of diabetes and its prevalence worldwide, it seemed important to investigate how the Diabetes Clinic passed through the individual phases of the pandemic, and the possibility of protecting hospitalized patients against future pandemic infection. We present detailed characteristics of the situation in a ward which used to treat non-infectious patients with diabetes only and, nowadays, has been obliged to take into account the risk of spreading SARS-Cov-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2) infection also. Moreover, we suggest solutions to avoid cases of infectious diseases in non-infectious wards in the future.

Monitoring Legionella species in hospital water systems. Link with disease and evaluation of different detection methods.

The aim of this work was to evaluate three currently available isolation methods for Legionella using water samples and swabs of a single pediatric hospital water system. Additionally, high risk patients were screened for the presence of Legionella pneumophila antigen in urine. Fifteen water samples and 11 swab samples were collected from distal sites at 18 sampling locations. The International Standard Method (PN-ISO11731-2) based on membrane filtration and direct culture of bacteria on selective media were compared with amoebic co-culture. The numbers of legionellae detected exceeded 10(2) cfu/100 ml in 50% of the samples. All the positive samples contained L. pneumophila SGs 2-14. Urine samples were obtained from 57 immunosuppressed children and screened for the presence of L. pneumophila serogroup (SG) 1 antigen by Legionella urinary antigen EIA. Of the 57 urine samples tested for the presence of Legionella pneumophila SG 1 antigen, none were positive. Our results highlight the value of combined membrane filtration and amoebic co-culture methods in detecting viable L. pneumophila strains. Direct plating of 0.2 ml water is a useful screening method for samples containing large bacterial amount.