#COVID19 Journal Club: “Air and Environmental Contamination Caused by COVID-19 Patients: a Multi-Center Study”

Very nice and cleanly done study here, “Air and Environmental Contamination Caused by COVID-19 Patients: a Multi-Center Study” is a very straightforward look at the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in a healthcare setting… without aerosol generating procedures being part of the pictures.  They looked at the air (all negative) and a bunch of surfaces (27% positive …

#COVID19 Preprint Journal Club: “Viable SARS-CoV-2 in the air of a hospital room with COVID-19 patients”

I missed blogging about this important preprint when it came out for some reason. “Viable SARS-CoV-2 in the air of a hospital room with COVID-19 patients“.   I’ve talked in the past about how many of the environmental sampling studies come out are only looking at SARS-CoV-2 RNA and not viable virus.   Here’s a nice …

#COVID19 Journal Club “Aerosol and Surface Distribution of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 in Hospital Wards, Wuhan, China, 2020”

(h/t to Linsey Marr for posting this on Twitter) Another, more comprehensive, environmental sampling survey for SARS-CoV-2 from a hospital… this time in Wuhan, China.  “Aerosol and Surface Distribution of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 in Hospital Wards, Wuhan, China, 2020“.  The authors here did air as well as surface sampling.  Again, only RNA …

Man-made microbial resistances in built environments

Antibiotic resistance has been assessed to rise to dangerously high levels in all parts of the world, and new resistance mechanisms are emerging and spreading globally. At the same time the number of people dying from antibiotic-resistant bacteria is increasing. The World Health Organization considers the spread of antibiotic resistance and appropriate countermeasures as one …

#MoBE #IndoorMicro new paper: isolation of bacterial diversity present in medical waste and health care settings in hospitals in Kenya

New paper of potential interest to the microbiology of the built environment crowd:  African Journal of Microbiology Research – isolation of bacterial diversity present in medical waste and health care settings in hospitals in kenya Nosocomial infections have impacted great burden in healthcare system and has led to deteriorating health condition and deaths. This study …

How important is hand-washing outside of a hospital environment?

I recently spent a weekend visiting a friend out of state and quickly came to realize that he rarely washed his hands. Before eating? No. After the gym? No. Even after going to the bathroom…and not just urination. No washing! I was disgusted and could not convince him of the same. How could an educated …

A new, and scary, fungus among us #MoBE #Candida

Fascinating, scary and really important read from Maryn McKenna in Wired: The Strange and Curious Case of the Deadly Superbug Yeast By the normal standards of outbreak, Candida auris signals a mind-bending shift—and it’s forcing researchers draw on some of medicine’s oldest practices to rethink treatment.   The article tells the tale of Candida auris a fungus that …

New paper of interest on how premature infant gut microbiome shapes the microbiome of NICUs

There is a new paper of interest from Jill Banfield’s lab.  I found out about it via Twitter: Study on the NICU microbiome out now in @MicrobiomeJ – The developing premature infant gut microbiome is a major factor shaping the microbiome of neonatal intensive care unit rooms. https://t.co/GEtMkLxwUy @bmbrook @MattagenOlmics @mcgrath_bio @dahanome — The Banfield …

Toothbrushes and using them might reduce hospital acquired pneumonia

Well this certainly caught my attention.  A friend and colleague Tara Smith posted this link to Facebook: Sutter Medical Center cut pneumonia by 70%. The key? 50,000 toothbrushes. | Advisory Board Daily Briefing So I went to the site and found some very interesting details including: Pneumonia typically is contracted from germs that enter the body …

Strain-resolved analysis of hospital rooms & infants reveals overlap between human & room microbiome 

Of potential interest – new paper from the Banfield Lab – thanks to Elisabeth Bik for pointing me to this on Twitter.   Preterm infants exhibit different microbiome colonization patterns relative to full-term infants, and it is speculated that the hospital room environment may contribute to infant microbiome development. Here, we present a genome-resolved metagenomic …