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cWe report the emergence of five carbapenem-resistant K1 hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae (hvKP) strains which caused fatal infections in hospital patients in Zhejiang Province, China, upon entry through surgical wounds. Genotyping results revealed the existence of three genetically related strains which exhibited a new sequence type, ST1797, and revealed that all strains harbored the magA and wcaG virulence genes and a plasmid-borne bla KPC-2 gene. These findings indicate that K1 hvKP is simultaneously hypervirulent, multidrug resistant, and transmissible.

A collection of 1159 enterococcal isolates from five Chinese hospitals were screened for the presence of the novel oxazolidinone resistance gene optrA, which was found in 34 (2.9%) isolates. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) typing of 29 optrA-carrying Enterococcus faecalis isolates revealed 25 PFGE patterns, and multilocus sequence typing yielded 20 sequence types. Routine surveillance of optrA-positive enterococci in hospitals should be conducted to monitor and counteract their further dissemination. The data of this study may be used as a baseline from which to judge future decreases or increases in optrA-positive enterococci.

The rapid dissemination of non‐conjugative virulence plasmids among non‐K1/K2 types of Klebsiella pneumoniae poses an unprecedented threat to human health, yet the underlying mechanisms governing dissemination of such plasmids is unclear. In this study, a novel 68 581 bp IncFIA plasmid is discovered that can be fused to a hypervirulence‐encoding plasmid to form a hybrid conjugative virulence plasmid in conjugation experiments; such fusion events involve homologous recombination between a 241 bp homologous region located in each of the two plasmids. The fusion hypervirulence‐encoding plasmid can be conjugated to both classic and blaKPC‐2‐bearing carbapenem‐resistant K. pneumoniae strains through conjugation, enabling such strains to acquire the ability to express the hypervirulence phenotype. Dissemination of this fusion virulence plasmid will impose an enormous burden on current efforts to control and treat infections caused by multidrug resistant and hypervirulent K. pneumoniae.