BACKGROUND: Coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 emerges worldwide consideration since their first proving. The knowledge and attitude of all medical personnel play an important role in the effectiveness of infection control policies among medical institutions. AIM: The study evaluates the knowledge of health care workers (HCWs) about infection control policies at the Egyptian institutions trying to identify the degree of their awareness to deal with such outbreak. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was implemented in public and private hospitals sectors at Cairo, Egypt, through a structured self-administered questionnaire that was delivered to HCWs in the selected hospitals. RESULTS: A total of 486 physicians working between university, governmental, teaching, private hospitals, and polyclinics submitted their replies. Of whom, 46.9% practiced internal medicine specialty, 35.4% were pediatricians, and only 17.7% specialized in the family medicine. Regarding the overall level of knowledge about infection control and prevention among HCWs, we found that 87.2% of participants reported presence of infection control program at their institutions and about 79% practiced these policies while only 60.5% received some training. Furthermore, we found that 64.2% of the participant did not know which infections are officially reported. There was some variation in response to causes related to the outbreak as 43.8% referred that to shortage of appropriate personnel protective equipment and only 7.4% assigned the carelessness of HCWs. Moreover, the insufficient resources to fulfill the infection control requirements were assigned as a primary factor to spread of infection (71.4%). The electronic surveillance system was believed the most efficient reporting system of infectious agents by staff (83.1%). The study revealed that there was a statistically significant difference of knowledge of infection control among medical staff according to their specialties (p ≤ 0.05). Moreover, there was a significant trend of orientation about infection control toward the highly certificated individuals (having PhD). Furthermore, there was a potential variance between the groups of higher and lower years of experience regarding in their answers about surveillance system institutions (p ≤ 0.05). In addition, there was variation in responses to questions related to various institutions as a higher percent of awareness of the presence of active infection control policy was found at the governmental and university hospitals (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: HCWs had reasonable knowledge about infection control and surveillance during COVID-19 outbreak and we have discovered zones of concern about infection control experience in Egypt which differ between institutions and professions and years of experience.

Background: Red blood cell (RBC) transfusions in preterm infants have been associated with increased risk of short-term morbidities, as necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) and intracranial hemorrhage (ICH). Aim of work: To study the relationship between RBC transfusions and short-term morbidities in preterm infants. Patients and Methods: Retrospectively, the relationship between RBC transfusions, number of transfusions and short-term morbidities were investigated in the first week and month over two years from 1 st March 2018 to 29 th February, 2020. One hundred sixty-one preterm infants were included: 91 females and 70 males who were ≤ 32 weeks of gestation and 1500 grams. Results: First week transfusions significantly correlated with the incidence and severity of ROP and BPD (P-value 0.012 & 0.014 for ROP) and (Pvalue 0.001 for the incidence and severity of BPD) and only the incidence of NEC and ICH regardless of the number of transfusions (P-value <0.001 for both), except for the outcome, where number of transfusions was significant in addition (P-value 0.007) compared to a highly significant outcome in relation to first week transfusion (P-value <0.001). First month transfusions were considerably associated with the incidence and severity of ROP (P-value <0.001 for both) and only associated with the incidence of NEC, ICH, and BPD (P-value of <0.001 for all). First month number of transfusions significantly correlated with the incidence and severity of BPD (P-value 0.024 & and 0.006 respectively) and the outcome (P-value 0.004). Conclusion: RBCs transfusion should be limited to the extremely indicated preterm infants especially in the first month of life.