The scientist shuffled slowly into the dimly lit lab, his yellowing lab coat flapping against his legs as he moved between benches scattered with forgotten specimens and broken bits of equipment.
 
“I wonder what choice morsels you have for me today” he chattered to no one in particular.

Back in 1986 a certain ex-film star, and former President of the United States, set in motion an annual event known as International Infection Prevention Week (IIPW). I had no idea Ronald Reagan was the person who started this, but apparently, he was! Okay, so along with trying to save lives he was also keen on reducing the amount of money being spent dealing with healthcare associated infections, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say it was mainly about saving lives.
 
Since its inception IIPW has spread around the globe and now is an annual event in such diverse places as Australia, the United Kingdom, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
 
Each year IIPW has a theme. Recent themes include Vaccines are Everybody’s Business in 2019, Protecting Patients Everywhere in 2018, Antibiotic Resistance in 2017 and Break the Chain of Infection in 2016.
 
This year’s theme is “Make Your Intention Infection Prevention” …catchy huh? Our Infection Control Team has been running around the hospital sporting fancy T-shirts looking like “professional footballers”!
 
They told me that the idea behind this year’s theme is to encourage everyone, the general population as well as healthcare workers, to put infection control practices at the heart of what they do; make them an instinctive and everyday part of how we go about our lives.
 
Now this may seem obvious, surely everyone does this already …but do they? How many people wash their hands regularly? How many people self-isolate when they are unwell? How many people carry tissues around in case they sneeze? My suspicion is …not many!
 
Let’s look at the elephant in the room …Covid-19 (clearly my favourite topic!).
 
Below is a graph from the Department of Health (UK) website showing the cumulative number of cases of Covid-19 in the UK since the pandemic began. 

Okay, it’s all over the News… no not the anxieties about Christmas shopping because of the lack of lorry drivers… although ECIC has just placed the turkey order! No I’m talking about the Parliamentary report from the Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees called “Coronavirus: lessons learned to date”… of course!

Okay, that’s a definite click-bait title but I have my reasons for asking the question. Over the past couple of weeks, I have had a number of calls about people who clearly have Covid-19 and yet it hasn’t even been considered in the diagnosis. Seriously, not even considered!? We are having between 35,000 and 40,000 cases of Covid-19 every day in the UK, it is almost certainly currently the most common infectious disease in the UK, and yet it is being “forgotten” and still being missed! WHY?!