Welcome back everyone, to Inside Infection Control, our video blog here at CDC's Project Firstline.
I'm Abby Carlson. I'm an infectious diseases doctor with the CDC,
and it's great to have you here today.
You've heard in the news and at work that there are new strains
of SARS-CoV-2, this virus that causes COVID-19.
Some people might have referred to them as new variant or new mutations.
And you might also have heard that these new variants or strains
are spreading among people even more than the old strains.
What does this mean for infection control?
Should we be doing things differently for new strains of virus?
The tools that we use for infection control, work.
And the way they work for COVID-19 hasn't changed.
It's all the more important to keep using those tools in the right way at the right time
to prevent the virus from spreading, including any of these new virus strains.
Viruses create new strains, or variations, or mutations, regularly.
This isn't unusual, it's something we know about.
We know that it happens, we know that it will happen on a regular basis.
This is why we hear about different strains of the flu every year
and why you can get a cold more than once.
Those viruses change in small, but important, ways for the body,
that the body recognizes or that the body loses sensitivity to.
Those changes--you can think about them like different breeds of dogs.
Dogs are all different sizes, they're all different colors,
they have different personalities, but they're all still dogs.
They don't grow wings, they don't grow fins.
They don't turn into cats.
We still treat them just like dogs.
The same with virus strains.
They're all still SARS-CoV-2 viruses.
They've just developed small differences.
So, back to these new strains. How do they happen?
As we talked about in an earlier episode,
viruses have genes that act like an instruction booklet
telling the virus how to make copies of itself.
Every time the virus copies itself, it copies its instruction booklet.
But when it does that, it makes mistakes, like a schoolkid copying out of a book--
sometimes they get a word wrong or spell something wrong.
And when the instructions are copied wrong, the machines that build the virus
can't tell the difference between a mistake and what it's supposed to be,
and the virus is built in a slightly new way with the mistake incorporated,
and a new strain develops.
Some strains can't survive, they disappear--in fact, most strains do.
But other strains, some of them are able to move between people.
And then they spread.
There are always different strains going around,
and multiple strains of the virus that causes COVID-19 have been documented.
We're still working to understand how these new strains affect people,
and it's not clear which ones make people sicker or might lead to more deaths and how that happens.
But the basics of the virus don't appear to have changed.
That basic structure is what matters most for infection control.
And it's why our infection control recommendations work
and are more important than ever.
The ways we block the virus are the same.
The recommended PPE hasn't changed.
A respirator is still going to prevent you from breathing viruses in inside the respiratory droplets.
Masking will keep those respiratory droplets out of the air so they can't be breathed in by others.
Physical distance still helps people avoid breathing in each other's respiratory droplets.
And good ventilation is still important
for cleaning air that might have respiratory droplets in it.
And that includes making sure your indoor air is cycling through.
We talked about ventilation in just the two prior episodes to this,
so please check that out if you want to know more.
Cleaning your hands, still incredibly important.
Soap and water and alcohol-based hand sanitizer
break apart the virus envelope that holds it together, and that hasn't changed.
So, those things still work.
Same thing with cleaning and disinfecting the environment.
The cleaning products on EPA's list N, N as in Nancy, for killing SARS-CoV-2,
those products still work to kill the known virus strains.
Because we're seeing strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus
that seem to spread more easily among people,
we have even less margin for error, even less room to make mistakes.
It's all the more important that our infection control practices are solid.
It can be scary to think about,
to think about the virus changing and what that might mean for stopping the pandemic,
for vaccines, and for people getting sick.
But even though we're still learning about all of these things and the virus strains,
we do know that the recommended basic things for infection control still work.
So, keep doing what you're doing.
Keep wearing masks.
Keep using your PPE when you're working with patients,
and you'll help prevent the spread of the virus, including these new strains.
As always, thanks for joining us once again.
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Or check us out on the website CDC.gov/ProjectFirstline
We'll see you all back here with the next episode.