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Los Angeles County health officials are attempting to assuage the public’s fears surrounding a deadly outbreak of drug-resistant bacteria at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, saying the episode is “not a threat to public health.” ... [Dr. David Feinberg, president of the UCLA Health System] said the hospital has implemented new sterilization procedures that exceed Food and Drug Administration requirements. Since then, no new cases have been discovered. (Mai-Duc and Terhune, 2/20)

The U.S. government is close to finalizing instructions to prevent medical devices responsible for transmitting "superbugs" from spreading the potentially fatal pathogens between patients, the scientist leading the effort said. The new protocol for the reusable devices, called duodenoscopes, is being developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), whose disease detectives have investigated duodenoscope-transmitted infections since 2013. (Begley, 2/20)

Thursday, in a notice to hospitals and doctors, FDA officials warned that the devices, known as duodenoscopes, are designed in such a way that fully cleaning them may not be possible. Contaminated devices are believed to have transmitted drug-resistant infections to patients at several hospitals over the last two years, including two who died at UCLA's Ronald Reagan Medical Center. The review of the design and performance of the problematic scopes remained "ongoing," the agency said in a statement. Despite the danger that has been found so far, "FDA is concerned by the risk to public health that would be created by removing the scopes from the market," the statement said. "No alternative devices" are available to replace the scopes, it added. (Willman, 2/20)

Hospitals nationally are scrambling to figure out how to keep using a controversial medical device that benefits patients while avoiding another deadly bacterial outbreak like the one at UCLA Medical Center. ... Federal regulators aren't pulling the devices from the market, saying that would do more harm to public health because they offer life-saving treatments that can't be performed otherwise. Experts say a redesign of these duodenoscopes that are so hard to clean might be years away. (Terhune, 2/20)

The latest outbreak of a deadly drug-resistant bacterial infection spread through contaminated endoscopes has prompted calls for re-evaluating the adequacy of currently recommended cleaning and reprocessing procedures. It's also led some observers to question why the Food and Drug Administration didn't act sooner despite previous outbreaks involving the scopes. Leaders at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where as many as 179 people were exposed to drug-resistant bacteria while undergoing endoscopic procedures, say the manufacturer-recommended protocols they followed were inadequate. (Rice and Johnson, 2/21)