Tonight, I watched Rhys White from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research in New Zealand present “Real-time genomic surveillance with nanopore sequencing.” They have started a collaboration with the Wellington Regional Hospital. The goal was to make Nanopore sequencing accessible to the clinical lab. The team used a MinION device to sequence blood and urine samples from hospital-acquired infections. The sample is cultured and used for DNA extraction and sequencing. Bioinformatics analyses are performed by White and the team at ESR. In one example, the team was able to identify MRSA sequence type 97 in neonates, starting with two symptomatic cases and then, after screening, numerous others. The second case study was Clostridioides difficile ST2 cases in one ward. Similar to the MRSA outbreak, subsequent cases were no longer ST2. The success of this program has allowed expansion to a second facility. This was such an interesting session on a topic I am very interested in: epidemiology.
