An effective and automated approach for reducing infection risk from contaminated privacy curtains

Privacy curtain contamination, including with multidrug-resistant organisms, and the associated infection transmission risks have been well described; however, current approaches for addressing these risks and available guidance are limited. The present study describes the successful reduction of curtain contamination in five different units within a tertiary care hospital utilizing continuous dry hydrogen peroxide (DHP). Microbial load was reduced by 99.47 percent on Day 1 and statistically significant reductions were main-tained throughout the 28-day study. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Automated summary

This study successfully reduced curtain contamination in different units of a tertiary care hospital using continuous dry hydrogen peroxide method. The microbial load decreased by 99.47% on Day 1 and maintained statistically significant reductions throughout the 28-day study, indicating a positive impact in reducing infection transmission risks.