Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

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This is Lindsay Smith-Roggers.

Hospital Infection Control, 2024 edition. Dr. Lisa Marigakis is a professor of medicine

and epidemiology and the Senior Director of Infection Prevention at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

She joins Dr. Josh Sharstein to talk about what hospitals are doing to address contagious

respiratory disease and the fallout of the pandemic four years

after COVID came to town. Let's listen. Dr. Lisa Marigakis, how are you doing? I'm doing well.

Thanks so much for having me today. It's great to have you back on the podcast. You were one of our

very first guests back in March 2020.

We called you to hear about your work in charge of infection control at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

You were getting ready for the pandemic to really hit.

That's right. I recall it very well and it does feel like somewhat of a time warp to realize that four years have gone by.

I was in your office in person, I think, for that one.

Yes, yes. We met there. And of course, our team was on site. A lot of people were starting to shelter at home.

But our team was in full swing of doing the emergency preparedness and response for the pandemic.

Well, we're not going to look back too much, but I do remember being struck by how calm you were at the time and how you had a plan for a significant respiratory pathogen.

And I know that you worked unbelievably long hours over the following few years to implement

that plan.

And it was very successful at Johns Hopkins.

...