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>> Welcome back everyone to inside infection control, our video series here at CDC's Project Firstline. I'm Abby Carlson. I'm an infectious diseases doctor at the CDC, and it's great to have you with us. We have talked in previous episodes a lot about the different actions that we can take to keep germs from spreading in healthcare in particular. And source control is one of those important actions. But what exactly is source control?

It's a concept that we come back to a lot because it's that important, and it starts, not surprisingly, just like its name, at the source. You're stopping germs at the source before they can spread to other people. We talk about source control as an important tool for COVID-19 to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and other diseases that travel in respiratory droplets, and we're going to focus on that today. But keep in mind, source control is important for a lot of other diseases too. One example is shingles. We cover the spot where a shingles rash is which keeps virus from getting from the rash into the air or onto other surfaces in your environment where it can spread and it can infect people. That's source control for shingles. Covering the rash, the source. In COVID-19, source control focuses on covering the nose and mouth to keep your respiratory droplets out of the air because that is the main way that the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, gets from person to person. Masks that fit snuggly around the checks and our chin are the main way to do source control for COVID-19. A mask that fits well covers your nose and your mouth and blocks those respiratory droplets which are traveling in the air when you breathe and which have virus in them if you're infected. 

This means that those droplets when they're covered up with that mask are much less likely to reach other people around you and then infect them. And if you're caring for a patient with COVID-19 and you're using an N95 respirator and not a mask, most N95 respirators that we use in healthcare are also good at blocking your respiratory droplets from breathing out into the air. So, with most N95s, not only are you protected from the virus that your patient is breathing out, but your patients and your colleagues, if you're infected with any virus are protected from germs that you might breathe out. All of this source control is important for COVID-19 because we don't always know who's infected. Other source control methods like in the shingles example depend on knowing that the patient is infected and knowing what to do. For example, covering a wound because you've seen it. You know it's there. COVID-19 is different because we have patients who are asymptomatic which means they could be infected but they might not show it yet, and we may not be aware that they or we, if we're infected, can spread the virus to others by talking, breathing, singing, and other activities that use our breath. 

We'll talk more about this in another episode so please stay tuned for that because asymptomatic transmission, asymptomatic infection, it's an important thing. But this spreading of infection when you don't have symptoms, it's one of the biggest reasons we have everyone wear a mask that fits well when they're in the healthcare setting and also when you're out in the community. So, you could see why source control is an important tool in healthcare and in the community for stopping the spread of COVID-19 and other diseases that travel by respiratory droplets.

As always, thanks for joining us. Please be sure to follow up with us on Facebook, on Twitter. We're on YouTube, and of course, we're on the web, cdc.gov/projectfirstline. 

We will see you back here for the next episode.