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Background The hospital environment has got more attention as evidence as source for bacterial transmission and subsequent hospital-acquired infection increased. Regular cleaning and disinfection have been proposed to lower the risk of infection, in particular for gram-positive bacteria. Auto-disinfecting surfaces would allow to decrease survival of pathogens, while limiting resource to achieve a safe environment in patient rooms. Methods A controlled trial to evaluate the antimicrobial effectiveness of a polyvinyl chloride foil containing an integrated silver-based agent (containing silver ions 2%) on high-touch surfaces in patient rooms. Results The overall log reduction of the mean values was 1.8 log10 CFU, the median 0.5 log10 CFU comparing bioburden of control vs antimicrobial foil (p Conclusions A foil containing an integrated silver-based agent applied to high-touch surfaces effectively results in lower recovery of important pathogens from such surfaces over a 6-month study period.

Background The optimal extent of screening of contact patients (CoPat) after exposure to patients infected or colonized with vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) remains controversial. Methods We retrospectively developed a new risk stratification for screening patients exposed to VRE, based on data from three outbreaks—two with Enterococcus faecium vanB and one with Enterococcus faecium vanA involving 1096 CoPat—in a low endemic setting. We classified them into four risk groups: three on environmental exposure, one by healthcare exposure: high (sharing the same room/bathroom with a VRE-colonized patient), medium (hospitalization in the same room after a VRE-colonized patient’s discharge until terminal disinfection including ultraviolet C (UVc)-disinfection), low (hospitalized in the same room within three weeks before the VRE-colonized patient), and “staff” (screening of patients having the same medical care team). Results VRE-transmission occurred in 7.9% in the high-risk group compared to 0.6% and 0% in the medium and low risk groups. There was a significant trend to higher rates of transmission by risk level of exposure (p Conclusion Based on this stratification, we recommend to focus screening of exposed CoPat on the high-risk and “staff” group, saving resources and costs, but larger studies will allow to further improve the yield of VRE screening in the outbreak setting.