Rising Fungal HAIs: A “Day Zero” Scenario

Rising Fungal HAIs: A “Day Zero” Scenario

Have you been having nightmares about your elderly neighbor becoming infected with Cordyceps and relentlessly chasing after you to spread the “conscious” fungus through a fresh bite?  You may have if you have spent the last few months watching HBO’s “The Last of Us”...
Slow Move from Culture Towards WGS Diagnostics?

Slow Move from Culture Towards WGS Diagnostics?

Time for a change of pace. We usually talk about hospital acquired infections in our Lab Services Blog, but a recent blog article from Eric Topol asking why whole genome sequencing isn’t used for infectious disease diagnostics got us talking. Sequencing-based...
Crossing the Chasm

Crossing the Chasm

We often get asked what other institutions are doing for their infection control and outbreak detection and how many are actually using whole-genome sequencing (WGS) routinely for outbreak transmission investigations. Well, the answer is…. complicated… Integrating WGS...
When Water Can Be Dangerous to Your Health

When Water Can Be Dangerous to Your Health

Water is the essence of life—nothing can live without it, but what happens when water becomes the source of life-threatening infections? Environmental reservoirs have been linked to healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), with water being one of the key accomplices....
To Screen or Not to Screen

To Screen or Not to Screen

When investigating HAI outbreaks, your decisions have significant consequences. Implementing disruptive precautionary measures without confirming clonality can be costly and unnecessary. But failing to deal with real outbreaks early can lead to patient safety concerns...
Just can’t seem to shake it off?

Just can’t seem to shake it off?

If you’ve been in infection control for a while, you know what it feels like when you seem to have a persistent outbreak and just can’t seem to shake it off… But how do you know it’s actually an ongoing outbreak? Are the new cases you are seeing related to the prior...
What is up with NTM?

What is up with NTM?

Recently, we received multiple requests to help with Nontuberculous Mycobacteria (NTM) healthcare-associated infection (HAI) investigations from hospitals located in different parts of the country, all within a short period of time. It’s not the first time we’ve been...
Unmasking promiscuous bacterial species in HAI investigations

Unmasking promiscuous bacterial species in HAI investigations

When it comes to determining relatedness between isolates in an HAI investigation, you know by now that we believe there is no better tool than whole-genome sequencing (WGS). But in some cases, WGS alone may not be enough. Although WGS allows you to see variations of...
Stop HAIs in their tracks…

Stop HAIs in their tracks…

As the pandemic starts to clear, infection control and microbiology labs are finally getting a chance to examine what was learned about healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) during the pandemic. One learning is that at least some types of HAIs such as central...
Sequencing costs are down to $0…

Sequencing costs are down to $0…

We always believed that whole genome sequencing based surveillance would be the most cost-effective strategy for infection control, but we didn’t realize that the cost can go all the way down to $0. Before you think we’ve gone mad, let’s clarify what we actually mean....