KSA MOH guidelines recommended collection of nasopharyngeal swab as the screening specimen for all patients suspected to have MERS-CoV but enabled additional collection of lower respiratory tract specimens for intubated patients (5, 18 ).
During the survey period (2001 2003), the proportion of screening specimens increased among the patients and staff members, and almost half of the MRSA isolations were recovered from patients' screening specimens (Table 2), reflecting the active screening policy.
Additionally, neonatal blood spots from the index child will be obtained from the newborn screening specimen archive maintained by the Genetic Disease Branch of the California Department of Health Services (Richmond, CA).
In the event of a screen-positive result, most programs rely on information submitted with the newborn screening specimen to identify the newborn's physician or medical home.
Even though birth hospitals collect the vast majority of screening specimens, record demographic information, and receive newborn screening test results, hospitals have not traditionally been held accountable to JCAHO for newborn screening activities per se.
Of the 1,980 MRSA detected in screening specimens, 86.7% were WAMRSA.
Only 13/106 (12%) patients had their first MRSA isolate from a clinical culture, whereas 716767%) were detected through on-admission screening and 22 (21%) in other screening specimens during the ICU stay or at discharge.
In many hospitals, newborn screening specimens are collected and submitted to the screening laboratory directly from the newborn nursery, bypassing some areas of this laboratory oversight.
We screened at least two anatomic sites for MRSA carriage as well as using overnight enrichment for screening specimens [ 21, 34], increasing the sensitivity of MRSA detection.
