Wednesday Dec 10, 2025
Unseen Reservoirs, Unseen Risks: Integrating Wastewater Surveillance with Patient-Level Insights into C. auris Spread
In this episode, Martin talks to Dr Jon Otter, Director of Infection Prevention and Control at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in London, UK. We examine two complementary pieces of work that provide further insight into Candidozyma auris transmission in acute hospitals. The first demonstrates, for the first time in the UK, that ward-level wastewater reliably mirrors patient colonisation and can reveal genetically related outbreak strains using culture and PCR. The second, a case–control study, identifies clinical and environmental risk factors that shape colonisation, highlighting the significance of shared patient equipment.
The paper can be found here: Davidson HC, Griffin AE, Symes L, Laing KG, Witney AA, Gould K, et al. Detection of Candidozyma (formerly Candida) auris from ward wastewater during an outbreak using culture and molecular methods. J Hosp Infect 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhin.2025.10.024
A copy of the poster can be downloaded here
1 months ago
Hi Dr Jon Otter and Martin thanks for your podcast. I would hope that the attached will wet your appetites for further discussion. The wastewater system should not be treated any different than the freshwater system when it comes to challenging infection transmission. Source control is my advocacy over many years as a public Health/Sanitary engineering consultant. Sadly we are faced with the conservative - ”we’ve always done it that way” Mindsets. So we have done quite a lot of work in infection control at the point of use, wash basin, baths, showers and fittings like sluice and macerators etc. Can you share your email and I will send details of our work and solutions that can be retrofitted today to reduce those wastewater associated risks.