Increasing trend of healthcare-associated infections due to vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VRE-fm) paralleling escalating community-acquired VRE-fm infections in a medical center implementing strict contact precautions: An epidemiologic and pathogenic genotype analysis and its implications.

OBJECTIVE: To clarify whether there were clandestine intra-hospital spreads of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VRE-fm) isolates that led to specific strain of VRE lingering in the hospital and/or developing outbreaks that rendered a progressively increasing trend of healthcare-associated infections due to VRE-fm (VRE-fm-HAIs). SETTING: Despite implementing strict contact precautions for hospitalized patients with VRE-fm-infection/colonization, number of VRE-fm-HAIs in a medical centre in southern Taiwan were escalating in 2009-2019, paralleling an increasing trend of community-acquired VRE-fm- infections. METHODS: We analyzed epidemiologic data and genotypes of non-duplicate VRE-fm isolates each grown from a normally sterile site of 89 patients between December 2016 and October 2018; multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and pulse-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) typing were performed. RESULTS: Totally 13 sequence types (STs) were found, and the 3 leading STs were ST17 (44％), ST78 (37％), and ST18 (6％); 66 pulsotypes were generated by PFGE. Four VRE-fm isolates grouped as ST17/pulsotype S, 2 as ST17/pulsotype AS, 2 as ST17/pulsotype AU, and 3 as ST78/pulsotype V grew from clinical specimens sampled less than one week apart from patients staying at different wards/departments and/or on different floors of the hospital. CONCLUSIONS: Despite possible small transitory clusters of intra-hospital VRE-fm spreads, there was no specific VRE-fm strain lingering in the hospital leading to increasing trend of VRE-fm-HAIs during the study period. Strict contact precautions were able to curb intra-hospital VRE-fm spreads, but unable to curb the increasing trend of VRE-fm-HAIs with the backdrop of progressively increasing VRE-fm-infections/colorizations in the community.