A powerful superbug may appear if different strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, mix with each other and mutate to develop new drug resistance, the Centre for Health Protection has warned.
Since community-acquired MRSA was made a notifiable disease in January, the centre has received 131 reports.
Hospital-acquired MRSA is not a notifiable disease although it is endemic in hospitals. There were 5,470 hospital-acquired MRSA cases in public hospitals last year.
Raymond Yung Wai-hung, head of the centre's infection control branch, said yesterday that the infection of community-acquired MRSA had remained stable at about 14 cases a month this year.
But it would be a long-term battle against the infection because the growth of bacteria was fast and it was difficult to monitor the use of antibiotics in the community.
Several major public hospitals had run a pilot study to check on the use of antibiotics in the past two years. Also, all hospitals had stepped up infectious disease control measures after the Sars outbreak in 2003, he said.
'It is difficult to conduct a city-wide MRSA screening to see how many people may carry the superbug.
