Initial Public Health Laboratory Response After Hurricane Maria - Puerto Rico, 2017.

Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017, causing major damage to infrastructure and severely limiting access to potable water, electric power, transportation, and communications. Public services that were affected included operations of the Puerto Rico Department of Health (PRDOH), which provides critical laboratory testing and surveillance for diseases and other health hazards. PRDOH requested assistance from CDC for the restoration of laboratory infrastructure, surveillance capacity, and diagnostic testing for selected priority diseases, including influenza, rabies, leptospirosis, salmonellosis, and tuberculosis. PRDOH, CDC, and the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) collaborated to conduct rapid needs assessments and, with assistance from the CDC Foundation, implement a temporary transport system for shipping samples from Puerto Rico to the continental United States for surveillance and diagnostic and confirmatory testing. This report describes the initial laboratory emergency response and engagement efforts among federal, state, and nongovernmental partners to reestablish public health laboratory services severely affected by Hurricane Maria. The implementation of a sample transport system allowed Puerto Rico to reinitiate priority infectious disease surveillance and laboratory testing for patient and public health interventions, while awaiting the rebuilding and reinstatement of PRDOH laboratory services.

Cepheid Xpert MRSA cycle threshold in discordant colonization results and as a quantitative measure of nasal colonization burden.

We analyzed the cycle threshold (C(T)) of PCR surveillance MRSA swabs obtained from veterans. Lower C(T) on admission was associated with a positive culture from nasal swabs at discharge. Compared to PCR, direct plating of nasal swabs performed poorly, especially for patients with an elevated C(T). The C(T) is strongly correlated with quantitative nasal cultures. Clinical and infection control applications of the C(T) have yet to be defined and warrant further evaluation.

The Use of a Shared Services Model for Mycobacteriology Testing: Lessons Learned.

OBJECTIVES: Public health laboratories (PHLs) provide essential services in the diagnosis and surveillance of diseases of public health concern, such as tuberculosis. Maintaining access to high-quality laboratory testing is critical to continued disease detection and decline of tuberculosis cases in the United States. We investigated the practical experience of sharing tuberculosis testing services between PHLs through the Shared Services Project. METHODS: The Shared Services Project was a 9-month-long project funded through the Association of Public Health Laboratories and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during 2012-2013 as a one-time funding opportunity to consortiums of PHLs that proposed collaborative approaches to sharing tuberculosis laboratory services. Submitting PHLs maintained testing while simultaneously sending specimens to reference laboratories to compare turnaround times. RESULTS: During the 9-month project period, 107 Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex submissions for growth-based drug susceptibility testing and molecular detection of drug resistance testing occurred among the 3 consortiums. The median transit time for all submissions was 1.0 day. Overall, median drug susceptibility testing turnaround time (date of receipt in submitting laboratory to result) for parallel testing performed in house by submitting laboratories was 31.0 days; it was 43.0 days for reference laboratories. The median turnaround time for molecular detection of drug resistance results was 1.0 day (mean = 2.8; range, 0-14) from specimen receipt at the reference laboratories. CONCLUSIONS: The shared services model holds promise for specialized tuberculosis testing. Sharing of services requires a balance among quality, timeliness, efficiency, communication, and fiscal costs.

Trends in Testing for Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex From US Public Health Laboratories, 2009-2013.

OBJECTIVE: We investigated data from US public health laboratories funded through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Tuberculosis Elimination and Laboratory Cooperative Agreement to document trends and challenges in meeting national objectives in tuberculosis (TB) laboratory diagnoses. METHODS: We examined data on workload and turnaround time from public health laboratories' progress reports during 2009-2013. We reviewed methodologies, laboratory roles, and progress toward rapid detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex through nucleic acid amplification (NAA) testing. We compared selected data with TB surveillance reports to estimate public health laboratories' contribution to national diagnostic services. RESULTS: During the study period, culture and drug susceptibility tests decreased, but NAA testing increased. Public health laboratories achieved turnaround time benchmarks for drug susceptibility tests at lower levels than for acid-fast bacilli smear and identification from culture. NAA positivity in laboratories among surveillance-reported culture-positive TB cases increased from 26.6% (2355 of 8876) in 2009 to 40.0% (2948 of 7358) in 2013. Public health laboratories provided an estimated 50.9% (4285 of 8413 in 2010) to 57.2% (4210 of 7358 in 2013) of culture testing and 88.3% (6822 of 7727 in 2011) to 94.4% (6845 of 7250 in 2012) of drug susceptibility tests for all US TB cases. CONCLUSIONS: Public health laboratories contribute substantially to TB diagnoses in the United States. Although testing volumes mostly decreased, the increase in NAA testing indicates continued progress in rapid M tuberculosis complex detection.

Duration of colonization with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in an acute care facility: a study to assess epidemiologic features.

BACKGROUND: Patients with a history of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) colonization or infection are often presumed to remain colonized when they are readmitted to the hospital. This assumption underlies the hospital practice that flags MRSA-positive patients so that these patients can be placed in contact isolation at hospital admission and, when necessary, be given the appropriate empirical therapy and/or antibiotic prophylaxis. METHODS: To determine the duration of and factors associated with MRSA colonization among patients following discharge, we designed a cohort study of patients hospitalized between October 1, 2007, and July 31, 2009, at the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center, a 128-bed acute care facility. We defined 3 cohorts: cohort A; patients with both a MRSA infection during hospitalization and nasal colonization at discharge; cohort B; patients with a MRSA infection but no nasal colonization at discharge; and cohort C; patients only nasally colonized at discharge. We collected information on demographic characteristics, underlying conditions, infections, and antibiotic use. We cultured nasal swabs obtained from patients at home. We calculated hazard ratios (HR), comparing cohorts A, B, and C after controlling for other factors. RESULTS: We obtained 231 swabs (23 in cohort A, 34 in cohort B, and 174 in cohort C). We documented MRSA colonization in 92 (39.9%) of the 231 patients who returned swabs. The median duration of colonization was 33.3 months. Factors significantly associated with persistent MRSA colonization were (1) total duration of hospital stay from previous admissions prior to study entry and (2) a member of cohort A who had a longer duration of colonization compared with cohorts B and C (P < .001). CONCLUSION: Our data suggest that higher initial inocula of bacteria may be an important determinant of persistent colonization with MRSA.

Reduction of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection among veterans in Atlanta.

OBJECTIVE: Describe local changes in the incidence of community-onset and hospital-onset methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection and evaluate the impact of MRSA active surveillance on hospital-onset infection. DESIGN: Observational study using prospectively collected data. SETTING: Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center (AVAMC). PATIENTS: All patients seen at the AVAMC over an 8-year period with clinically and microbiologically proven MRSA infection. METHODS: All clinical cultures positive for MRSA were prospectively identified, and corresponding clinical data were reviewed. MRSA infections were classified into standard clinical and epidemiologic categories. The Veterans Health Administration implemented the MRSA directive in October 2007, which required active surveillance cultures in acute care settings. RESULTS: The incidence of community-onset MRSA infection peaked in 2007 at 5.45 MRSA infections per 1,000 veterans and decreased to 3.14 infections per 1,000 veterans in 2011 ([Formula: see text] for trend). Clinical and epidemiologic categories of MRSA infections did not change throughout the study period. The prevalence of nasal MRSA colonization among veterans admitted to AVAMC decreased from 15.8% in 2007 to 11.2% in 2011 ([Formula: see text] for trend). The rate of intensive care unit (ICU)-related hospital-onset MRSA infection decreased from October 2005 through March 2007, before the MRSA directive. Rates of ICU-related hospital-onset MRSA infection remained stable after the implementation of active surveillance cultures. No change was observed in rates of non-ICU-related hospital-onset MRSA infection. CONCLUSIONS: Our study of the AVAMC population over an 8-year period shows a consistent trend of reduction in the incidence of MRSA infection in both the community and healthcare settings. The etiology of this reduction is most likely multifactorial.

Does hand hygiene compliance among health care workers change when patients are in contact precaution rooms in ICUs?

BACKGROUND: Hand hygiene compliance rates among health care workers (HCW) rarely exceed 50%. Contact precautions are thought to increase HCWs' hand hygiene awareness. We sought to determine any differences in hand hygiene compliance rates for HCW between patients in contact precaution and those not in any isolation. METHODS: In a hospital's medical (MICU) and surgical (SICU) intensive care units, a trained observer directly observed hand hygiene by the type of room (contact precaution or noncontact precaution) and the type of HCW (nurse or doctor). RESULTS: The SICU had similar compliance rates (36/75 [50.7%] in contact precaution rooms vs 223/431 [51.7%] compliance in noncontact precaution rooms, P > .5); the MICU also had similar hand hygiene compliance rates (67/132 [45.1%] in contact precaution rooms vs 96/213 [50.8%] in noncontact precaution rooms, P > .10). Hand hygiene compliance rates stratified by HCW were similar with 1 exception. The MICU nurses had a higher rate of hand hygiene compliance in contact precaution rooms than in rooms with noncontact precautions (66.7% vs 51.6%, respectively). CONCLUSION: Compliance with hand hygiene among HCWs did not differ between contact precaution rooms and rooms with noncontact precautions with the exception of the nurses in the MICU.