How long is enough?

How long is enough?

Industry standards warrant a 6-week period of continual surveillance of a hospital cluster outbreak at the point of last detection, but is that enough? How can we tell if 6 weeks are enough? How can we know if our outbreaks are related to each other or maybe even one...
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....