Joint Commission revises position statement on preventing nosocomial COVID-19 infections

Editor's Note

The Joint Commission announced June 24 that it has revised its position statement on preventing nosocomial COVID-19 infections as healthcare organizations resume regular care delivery.

The Joint Commission supports the following positions:

• Continuing to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations for universal masking of staff, patients, and visitors.
• Wearing filtering-facepiece or higher-level respirators for all aerosol generating procedures or surgical procedures that pose a higher risk for transmission.
• Operating under crisis standards of care is not necessary when elective surgical procedures and ambulatory care is resumed.
• Using contingency conservation strategies for filtering facepiece respirators when there is a shortage.
• Testing patients having elective surgical or other aerosol-generating procedures for COVID-19 shortly before the procedure.
• Continuing to use filtering facepiece respirators for patients having elective surgical or other aerosol-generating procedures who test negative for COVID-19 because of the risk of false-negative tests.
• Checking with state and local health departments for specific requirements on preoperative/preprocedure testing for COVID-19.

The Joint Commission also has published FAQs about the revisions for the position statement.