Insights

CLSI’s Committees Weeks are an opportunity for the CLSI expert community to meet and connect with colleagues for a week of information sharing, consensus building, networking, and camaraderie. Committees Weeks are where the hard work behind CLSI’s standards and guidelines takes place—committees and subcommittees, following CLSI’s voluntary consensus process, work together on new and revised CLSI standards in development.

Selecting antimicrobial agents for preventing, controlling, and treating bacterial disease in animals requires weighing multiple factors. These include likelihood of pathogenic bacteria being present, expected response to therapy, availability of effective formulations, logistics of administering drugs in animals, cost, and legal restrictions. Use of AST can provide evidence related to the expected response to therapy when AST is applied judiciously and interpreted appropriately.

Audrey N. Schuetz, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN April Bobenchik, Penn State Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA Shelley Campeau, Microbiology Consultant, Tucson, AZ The CLSI AST Subcommittee has...

The CDC has issued a health alert for extensively drug resistant shigella.

The Value of Intermediate^ or “I^”

Paula Snippes Vagnone, Minnesota Department of Health, St. Paul, MN Priyanka Uprety, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ Arryn Craney, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY Novel...

Robert Bowden, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA Claire Burbick, Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Lab, Washington State University, Pullman, MA

As the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, many lessons are being learned, not the least of which is how to better prepare for future pandemics. This includes addressing the ongoing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) pandemic, which at a global scale has the potential to eclipse COVID-19.

Now, more than ever, it’s important to implement a disaster plan for your lab or update your lab’s current plan. Emergencies can impede your lab’s efficiency and sometimes even bring operations to a standstill. Preparation can help ensure that your lab continues to deliver high quality results and keep patients and laboratory workers healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic.