OXA-48 strain of CPO in the news

Several stories have been circulating in the U.S. press around a strain of CPO that the media has dubbed “The Phantom Menace”. The stories refer to this report published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on December 4, 2015. The main summary points of the report are:

• The plasmid containing OXA-48-like genes has high transfer efficiency, and the OXA-48 gene is more difficult to identify.
• CDC has modified their surveillance definition from Jan 2015, which should improve sensitivity for detecting OXA-48.
• They are reporting aggregated numbers from 2010-2015, so we can’t see yet if the testing is showing more cases.
• Only 52 cases were identified from 19 states (not all states send their isolates to the CDC for testing)

You can read the full CDC report here.