ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 global pandemic changed people's lives in ways that cannot be overstated. Industries were forever changed, with healthcare policies and procedures being the most directly impacted. As the pandemic swept throughout the world and patients overwhelmed facilities, everyone looked to healthcare to be the savior of lives. With much of the focus on the availability of hospital beds and ventilators, not much of the media focused on what was occurring within healthcare – infection control compliance. Infection control within healthcare effectively started in the late 1840s with Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis, who conducted observational studies and advanced the idea of hand hygiene in medical settings. He proposed the practice of using a chlorinated lime solution to wash hands in Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where mortality rates in the midwives’ wards fell to three times less than those in the doctors’ wards.
