Environmental surveillance of bacteria in a new intensive care unit using plate sweeps.

ABSTRACT: The hospital environment plays a critical role in the transmission of infectious diseases. Surveillance methods often rely on selective enrichment or deep metagenomic sequencing, which both have significant drawbacks in terms of community resolution and cost. Plate sweeps provide a practical moderate approach to cultivate a wide range of bacteria, capturing more diversity than a single colony pick without high sequencing costs. Here, we use this approach to characterize a newly built hospital intensive care unit (ICU) in Queensland, Australia. Between November 2023 and February 2024, we sampled 78 sites within an 8-bed private hospital ICU pre- and post-patient introduction to the environment. Samples were enriched on non-selective media before DNA was extracted from whole plate sweeps and

SUBMITTER: McMurray-Jones A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12799223 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature