Assessing the healthcare epidemiology environment—A roadmap for SHEA’s future

[...]healthcare facilities will need to decide whether to mandate SARS-CoV-2 vaccination for their employees or to limit the clinical exposure of staff who are not immunized. [...]the SHEA board has recognized the nearly complete lack of a robust public health infrastructure to support a pandemic response across the United States. Pandemic planning and management has also resulted in healthcare epidemiologists having more interaction with local and state public health authorities and with healthcare epidemiologists outside their own institutions. Technological advances that affect healthcare epidemiology Recently, several major healthcare-associated outbreaks have been linked to contaminated medical equipment, such as outbreaks of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales related to exposure to duodenoscopes and outbreaks of Mycobacteria chimaera related to exposure to heater-cooler devices during open-heart surgery.