The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted healthcare facilities to pay much closer attention to a range of infection control measures designed to stop its spread and protect patients and staff. While the general public and even some front-line healthcare workers might overlook the importance of measures such as hand hygiene, a case study on provides evidence of the role strict attention to hygiene can play.

With mortality rates of 30-60 percent and an ability to fight off most antibiotics, the superbug Candida auris (C. auris) alarms healthcare professionals when they spot in their facilities. But investigators with the University of British Columbia found that immediate implementation of stringent infection prevention and control measures at one hospital in the greater Vancouver area stopped the spread of this deadly fungal infection, limiting it to four patients, according to Infection Control Today.

“Infection control measures, including surveillance, education, cleaning/disinfection, patient cohorting, isolation, and hand hygiene, effectively contained the outbreak; it was declared over within 2 months,” researchers write in the American Journal of Infection Control.

The spread of C. auris might be aided by all the attention given to COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People with COVID-19 are particularly vulnerable to C. auris.

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