Anyone who has spent time inside a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) knows it’s intense. For the tiny babies cared for in these wards, any infection could prove fatal. Great care is taken to prevent the spread of pathogens, but outbreaks still occur.
Traditionally, detecting outbreaks within a NICU has been reactive – only after multiple babies fall ill at the same time. Our research is advancing the use of whole-genome sequencing technologies to detect outbreaks early and stamp out bacteria before they threaten more babies. From reactive to proactive NICU outbreak surveillance usually involves monitoring rates of illness and identifying spikes and long-term trends that may point to a pathogen circulating on the ward.
When a potential outbreak is identified, bacteria may be cultured and retrospectively sequenced to determine if they can be linked to a shared source or transmission on the ward. Wellington Regional Hospital has changed its approach to infection surveillance in the NICU. Rather than waiting for infants to fall ill, they are using the same sequencing technology we developed at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research ( ESR ) for genomic contact tracking during the COVID pandemic.
Infants in the unit have diagnostic swab samples taken as part of routine practice. If any key bacteria are cultured from these samples, they are sequenced promptly to identify possible transmission events in near real time. This allows us to monitor the situation closel.