What set this outbreak apart?
- The outbreak strain is highly resistant and has never been reported in the United States, has never been connected to a contaminated product, and is extremely resistant to available antibiotics.
- Only 28% of U.S. hospitals* can test for this type of resistant pathogen (germ). Healthcare providers needed data from advanced lab tests to help them identify, treat, and stop this deadly threat.
- Healthcare providers and health departments first reported resistant infections of many body systems such as urinary tract infections, eye infections, and respiratory infections—making the source even harder to identify.
How did the experts solve the case?
- Detect: Working together with state and local HAI/AR programs, CDC epidemiologists discovered similar “fingerprints” in lab data from whole genome sequencing (WGS), an advanced technology unavailable to most health departments to test resistant healthcare pathogens until recently. Today, because of investments from CDC’s Antimicrobial Resistance Solutions Initiative, 45 U.S. health department labs can perform WGS for HAIs, giving disease detectives the data they need to combat antimicrobial resistance.
- Respond: Disease detectives conducted an investigation that found affected patients were 5x more likely to have used artificial tears and patient interviews and chart reviews revealed a common brand across 16 states.
- Prevent: Response teams worked quickly to communicate the risk to patients, healthcare providers, local epidemiologists, other federal agencies, and partners.
This complex response highlights the value of CDC’s national coordinated efforts to combat AR. CDC’s investment in prevention—laboratories to detect, epidemiologists to respond, and infection control experts to stop further spread—likely kept this outbreak from becoming much larger. Although CDC and partners across the world are making progress, more work is needed to slow the spread of AR and save lives.
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