It has been quite a long wait, but finally, investigators from the Environmental Health Institute (EHI – a part of the National Environment Agency) and the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) have published their work on tracing the source of the unusual ST283 Group B Streptococcus (GBS) that caused the huge raw freshwater fish-associated […]
One of the major criticisms of scientific publishing is the long delay it takes between writing up the work and eventually getting it out in the public arena, with the fault shared variously between the authors, journal editorial boards, and peer reviewers. In the process, the data and results are usually embargoed. There is an excellent […]
A non-systematic mention of outbreaks that have caught my attention this week. For a more comprehensive search, there is ProMED Mail. One can also skim through the MOH’s weekly infectious diseases bulletin, which is only about local notifiable diseases (where one can quickly see that we have had more dengue and HFMD cases compared to […]
After the fall back to baseline of severe Group B streptococcal infections in August, I did not expect to write another post of GBS so soon. But it just goes to show that the management of outbreaks and implementation of policies are both not always straightforward. An excellent recap of the GBS outbreak in Singapore […]
It has been a while since I last updated on the local Group B Streptococcus (GBS) outbreak in Singapore that is linked to the consumption of raw bighead carp. The good news is that there has been a dramatic fall in the number of cases of severe GBS after the National Environment Agency (NEA) recommended […]
Yesterday evening, in a joint statement issued by the Ministry of Health (MOH), Agri-Food &Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) and the National Environment Agency (NEA), the authorities revealed that there had been 238 cases of Streptococcus agalactiae (GBS) bacteraemia between 1st January and 30th June this year, compared to 150 cases per year on average for the […]
It has been slightly over a week since my earlier post on the Streptococcus agalactiae (GBS) outbreak in Singapore. There have been several initial news reports, and the Ministry of Health released a carefully worded message on 13th July stating that they were investigating the outbreak along with the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) and […]
There is a Facebook/WhatsApp message that has gone viral since yesterday, reporting on a patient at the National University Hospital with Group B Streptococcus septic arthritis and linking this with a rise in other such cases in Singapore, as well as consumption of raw fish from various porridge stalls in hawker centres. The message has […]
There is currently a bit of buzz about Streptococcus agalactiae (which is also referred to as Group B streptococcus, as it is the only Streptococcus species that belongs to Lancefield Group B), hence I had to update myself about this organism in a hurry. It is a Gram-positive coccus (just like MRSA), usually present as chains of cocci under the […]
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