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ABSTRACTObjective and importance:Candida aurisis a relatively new yeast species and an emerging opportunistic pathogen. It was first reported in 2009 in East Asia, as a difficult-to-identify Candidaspecies of uncertain clinical relevance. In recent years, it has appeared globally as a cause of invasive infections, not infrequently eliciting nosocomial outbreaks. Species identification in clinical laboratories has been challenging, as traditional phenotypic and biochemical methods have been generally unreliable. Clinical management is often complicated by multidrug resistance in many isolates. Additionally, C. aurishas demonstrated an unusual ability for persistence in the hospital environment and in asymptomatic patients. We present the first Belgian case of C. aurisinfection along with a brief review of the literature.Clinical presentation: A patient was referred from Kuwait for surgical treatment after a complicated bariatric procedure. Few days after transferral, she developed a catheter-related blood stream infection with C. auris. We obtained a low-confidence identification of C. auriswith the Bruker Biotyper MALDI-TOF MS system (Bruker Corporation, Billerica, MA, U.S.A.), and of Candida haemuloniiwith the Vitek YST identification system, version 7.01 (bioMérieux, Marcy-L’Etoile, France). Definite identification was obtained using Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) sequencing. As most C. aurisisolates, our strain was resistant to fluconazole, and the patient was eventually treated with catheter removal and anidulafungin therapy. We documented persistence of C. aurisclones with acquired echinocandin resistance in our patient up to 18 months after the infection.Conclusion:Clinicians and microbiologists should be aware of this globally emerging yeast, that poses important challenges in identification, treatment and hospital infection control.

We evaluated the quantitative DiaSorin Liaison severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) antigen test in symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals consulting their general practitioners (GPs) during a period of stable intense virus circulation (213/100,000 habitants per day). Leftover reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) positive (n?=?204) and negative (n?=?210) nasopharyngeal samples were randomly selected among fresh routine samples collected from patients consulting their GPs.