Plate sweep surveillance of bacteria in a newly opened intensive care unit

The hospital environment plays a critical role in the transmission of infectious diseases. Over two sampling periods in late 2023 and early 2024, we sampled 78 sites within a 10-bed private hospital intensive care unit pre- and post-patient introduction to the environment. Samples were enriched on non-selective media before DNA was extracted from whole plate sweeps and sequenced using Illumina. In this study, we demonstrate the utility of plate sweeps as a means of economical non-selective environmental surveillance and highlight its ability to identify hot-spots of transmission within a hospital ward that could be targeted by infection control prior to an outbreak of a more serious pathogen.