Community strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus involved in a hospital outbreak

Western Australia (WA) has been able to prevent methicillin-resistant Staph ylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains from outside of the state from becoming est ablished in its hospitals. Recently, a single-strain outbreak of MRSA occur red in a WA metropolitan teaching hospital following admission of an infect ed patient from a remote community. The strain responsible for the outbreak was unrelated to any imported strains and spread rapidly in the hospital. Screening of two remote communities in the region from which the index ease came revealed that 42% of the people in one community and 24% in the other carried MRSA. Isolates were typed by resistance pattern, plasmid analysis, contour-clamped homogeneous electric field electrophoresis, bacteriophage pattern, and coagulase gene restriction fragment length polymorphism. It wa s found that of the people carrying MRSA, 39% in the former community and 1 7% in the latter community were carrying an MRSA strain which was indisting uishable from the strain that caused the hospital outbreak.