Candida auris has emerged in the past decade as a multi-drug resistant public health threat causing health care outbreaks. Here we report epidemiological, clinical, and microbiological investigations of a C. auris outbreak in a regional Omani hospital between April 2018 and April 2019. The outbreak started in the intensive care areas (intensive care unit (ICU), coronary care unit (CCU), and high dependency unit) but cases were subsequently diagnosed in other medical and surgical units. In addition to the patients' clinical and screening samples, environmental swabs from high touch areas and from the hands of 35 staff were collected. All the positive samples from patients and environmental screening were confirmed using MALDI-TOF, and additional ITS-rDNA sequencing was done for ten clinical and two environmental isolates. There were 32 patients positive for C. auris of which 14 (43.8%) had urinary tract infection, 11 (34.4%) had candidemia, and 7 (21.8%) had asymptomatic skin colonization. The median age was 64 years (14-88) with 17 (53.1%) male and 15 (46.9%) female patients. Prior to diagnosis, 21 (65.6%) had been admitted to the intensive care unit, and 11 (34.4%) had been nursed in medical or surgical wards. The crude mortality rate in our patient's cohort was 53.1. Two swabs collected from a ventilator in two different beds in the ICU were positive for C. auris. None of the health care worker samples were positive. Molecular typing showed that clinical and environmental isolates were genetically similar and all belonged to the South Asian C. auris clade I. Most isolates had non-susceptible fluconazole (100%) and amphotericin B (33%)

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The effects of telemedicine on asthma control and patients' quality of life in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

On 27 April 2020, the National Health Service England issued an emergency alert for a new condition owing to the observation of an increasing number of cases of a COVID-19-related hyperinflammatory syndrome termed multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). Some of the presenting symptoms appeared similar to the Kawasaki disease and toxic shock syndrome. We report the cases of six children fitting the criteria of MIS-C, admitted to Royal Hospital and Sohar Hospital, Oman, between the months of June and July in 2020. Four of these patients required admission at the paediatric intensive care unit for inotropic support while two were admitted to the paediatric ward on suspicion of appendicitis. MIS-C has been reported in a small number of individuals below the age of 21 years with a median age of 9–10 years. Five of the current patients were aged less than the median age reported in the existing literature. All of the patients showed complete recovery with supportive management, intravenous immunoglobulin and steroids, with one patient requiring interleukin-6 inhibitor (tocilizumab). Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Kawasaki Disease; Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children; Toxic Shock Syndrome; Case Report; Oman.