Descriptive Analysis of Circulating Antimicrobial Resistance Genes in Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus (VRE) during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

COVID-19 offers ideal premises for bacteria to develop antimicrobial resistance. In this study, we evaluated the presence of several antimicrobial resistance genes (ARG) in vancomycin-resistant (VRE) isolated from rectal swabs from patients at a hospital in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Rectal swabs were cultivated on CHROMID VRE (bioMérieux, Marcy-l' Étoile, France) and positive isolates were identified using MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry (Bruker Daltonics, Bremen, Germany) and further analyzed using the PCR technique for the presence of the following ARGs: , , , , , , , , , , , , , and .