Rapid transmission and divergence of ST80 vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium driven by pangenomic variation during the ongoing outbreak. Enterococcus faecium

To trace the increasing VREfm in Shenzhen and characterized their genomic variation, we retrieved 42 VREfm isolates after 2020 from seven Shenzhen hospitals. The majority belongs to the ongoing outbreak lineage ST80 SC11 in Guangdong. Two sub-populations parallelly circulated for at least three years. IS-mediated recombination events were found drive the population divergence.