The spread of resistance to carbapenems among Enterobacteriaceae has become a major public health problem in recent years. In this study, we describe an outbreak of Klebsiella pneumoniae in the neonatal ward. First, we aimed to study the drug resistance, genetic relatedness, and transmission mechanism of carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae; second, we implemented infection control measures to contain the outbreak. We investigated 27 non-repetitive strains isolated from neonates and five strains cultured from around the neonatal ward. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the agar dilution method, and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) were used to analyze the resistance gene(s), antimicrobial susceptibility, and homology, respectively. Health-care personnel education, hand hygiene, outer gown changing, and infected patient isolation were strictly enforced. Our antimicrobial susceptibility results show that all strains were multidrug-resistant. MLST and PCR results revealed that, in this study, all of the KPC-2-producing strains are Sequence Type (ST) 11 (ST11) (n = 22) and all of the NDM-1-producing strains are ST20 (n = 4) or ST888 (n = 1). The environmental strains were identified as KPC-2-positive K. pneumoniae ST11 (n = 3) and NDM-1-positive K. pneumoniae ST20 (n = 2). The percentages of isolates with the extended-spectrum-β-lactamases CTX-M-15, blaCTX-M-14, blaTEM-1 were 9.4, 84.3, and 68.8 %, respectively. AmpC β-lactamase genes were not detected in our isolates. KPC-2-positive K. pneumoniae ST11 and NDM-1-positive K. pneumoniae ST20 were associated with this outbreak. The identification of these isolates in samples from radiant warmers and nurses suggests that hospital cross-transmission played a role in this outbreak. Active infection control measures were effective for controlling this multidrug-resistant K. pneumoniae outbreak.

Carbapenem-resistant Salmonella has recently aroused increasing attention. In this study, a total of four sequence type 36 Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium (S. Typhimurium) isolates were consecutively isolated from an 11-month-old female patient with a gastrointestinal infection, of which one was sensitive to carbapenems and three were resistant to carbapenems. Via antibiotic susceptibility testing, a carbapenemases screening test, plasmid conjugation experiments, Illumina short-reads, and PacBio HiFi sequencing, we found that all four S. Typhimurium isolates contained a bla_CTX-M-14-positive IncI1 plasmid. One carbapenem-sensitive S. Typhimurium isolate then obtained an IncHI2 plasmid carrying bla_NDM-1 and an IncP plasmid without any resistance genes during the disease progression. The bla_NDM-1 gene was located on a new 30 kb multiple drug resistance region, which is flanked by IS26 and TnAs2, respectively. In addition, the ST_F0903R isolate contained eight tandem copies of the ISCR1 unit (ISCR1-dsbD-trpF-ble-bla_NDM-1-ISAba125Δ1), but an increase in MICs to carbapenems was not observed. Our work further provided evidence of the rapid spread and amplification of bla_NDM-1 through plasmid. Prompting the recognition of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales and the initiation of appropriate infection control measures are essential to avoid the spread of these organisms.