Download high-resolution pdf below: A Novel Multi-Scale Outbreak Detection and Strain Identification Capability for Genome Sequence-Based Infection Control: An MRSA Example. J. C. Littlefair, B. Uttley, D. Frampton, J. F. Peden, N. J. Saunders The exclusion (as well as inclusion) of strains is vital for outbreak investigation and infection prevention and control of healthcare-associated infection, for both health resource management and patient-care. Current genome-sequence b

It is repeatedly stated that we face a global challenge of antimicrobial resistance and catastrophic health and economic impacts, and that this is the product of misuse, abuse, and essentially over-use of antibiotics. It is hard to argue, and I would not wish to, that this is at least partly the case, but it is both dangerous and misleading to present this as the whole of the explanation. What we are seeing is an inevitable consequence of many pressures and their inevitable e

As Sun Tzu famously said: ‘know your enemy’, or more correctly: ‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.’ This is true not only for human conflict but in what is probably the greatest and longest running battle the human race has ever engaged in: that between humans and their pathogens. Ultimately, COVID-19, our current enemy of focus, might kill 1%, but hopefully, many fewer now that there is a vaccine and better treatments

Life is full of initially hidden and unintended impacts and consequences; for something as huge and pervasive as COVID, no doubt they will be many and varied: some good, some bad, some just resulting in different. The global infrastructural leadership of the UK in the area of genomics, underpinned by the public and charitable contributions of the UK Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust, has been critical in surveillance, variant detection, and now screening. By February 2