Invasive Staphylococcus aureus Infection Surveillance

Key points

  • The Invasive Staphylococcus aureus Infection Surveillance Program collects data for describing incidence and trends of these infections.
  • Public health professionals and healthcare providers can use these data to further public health research and improve health outcomes.

Overview

As part of CDC's Emerging Infections Program (EIP) Healthcare-Associated Infections - Community Interface (HAIC) Activity, the Invasive Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) Infection Surveillance Program identifies and monitors:

  • Changes in incidence of hospital-onset (HO), healthcare-associated community-onset (HACO), and community-associated (CA) invasive, methicillin-resistant and methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MRSA and MSSA) infections.
  • Populations with invasive S. aureus that would benefit from improved prevention and treatment activities.
  • The impact of established prevention strategies.
  • Molecular and microbiologic characteristics of strains causing invasive S. aureus infections.

To collect this information, trained professionals conduct active population- and laboratory-based surveillance in 7 EIP sites.

Public health professionals and healthcare administrators can use these data to further research and improve S. aureus prevention strategies.

Highlights

In 2020‎

HO MRSA incidence increased compared to 2017-2019.
HACO and CA MRSA incidence decreased, interrupting the previous increases since 2017.
HO MSSA incidence increased slightly and is the highest observed since 2017.
HACO and CA MSSA incidence decreased compared to 2018 and 2019.

Explore the data

Access and create data visualizations‎

HAICViz is an interactive data dashboard that provides information included in the reports below as well as case rates and deaths over time.

Annual reports

Publications

See Also: NCBI Collection

About the data

Methods

EIP sites conducting surveillance

EIP Site
Area Under Surveillance
California
San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa counties in the metropolitan San Francisco Bay area
Connecticut
Statewide
Georgia
Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fulton, Gwinnett, Newton and Rockdale counties in metropolitan Atlanta
Maryland
Baltimore City and County
Minnesota
Hennepin and Ramsey counties in metropolitan Minneapolis-St. Paul
New York
Monroe County in metropolitan Rochester
Tennessee
Davidson County in metropolitan Nashville

For Connecticut and Georgia, the MSSA surveillance area is a subset of the total MRSA surveillance area. In Connecticut, the MSSA surveillance area is the South Central Connecticut Planning Region. In Georgia, the MSSA surveillance area is Fulton County.

Case definition

When S. aureus is isolated from a normally sterile body site in a patient who lives in the surveillance area. Sterile body sites can include:

  • Blood
  • Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)
  • Pleural fluid
  • Peritoneal fluid
  • Pericardial fluid
  • Bone
  • Joint/synovial fluid
  • Internal body site (e.g., lymph node, brain)

Data collection

The invasive S. aureus infection surveillance program is an active population- and laboratory-based surveillance system. Surveillance staff regularly query clinical laboratories to identify microbiological test results among persons living in a defined geographic area.

Resources

Case report forms for EIP surveillance staff

2024 Invasive MSSA/MRSA S. aureus