One in three of Hong Kong’s elderly care home residents carries MRSA superbug – three times the rate in Shanghai

Hong Kong’s elderly care homes are a hotbed of the superbug MRSA, with close to a third of residents found carrying it in a new study, spurring calls for the institutions to improve infection control.

The study, published in the latest issue of the Hong Kong Medical Journal, found that about 30 per cent of elderly people at residential care homes in Kowloon City carried Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a superbug common in Hong Kong.

MRSA can cause severe problems such as bloodstream infections and pneumonia. It is commonly found in health care facilities and was described in the study as placing “a substantial burden” on health care resources. Long-term care facilities, where residents might frequently use antibiotics and be in hospital for prolonged periods, provide a favourable environment for the growth of superbugs.

In the latest study, led by Dr Chen Hong from the Centre for Health Protection, 1,028 residents from 20 elderly care homes were covered. Samples such as nasal or rectal swabs were collected from them from September to December 2015 and tested for four types of superbug.

The median length of stay for respondents in those care homes was 1.8 years. More than half of them had been in hospital and used antibiotics in the previous 12 months.

The study described a high prevalence of MRSA among elderly care home residents, with 30.1 per cent of respondents found to be carriers, a rate similar to another survey done at elderly care homes on Hong Kong Island.

But the study’s authors said the figure in Hong Kong was higher than that in nursing home studies done in Britain, which had a rate of 4.7 per cent, and Shanghai, which had a rate of 10.6 per cent.