WITHDRAWN: Evaluation of Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (IR Biotyper) as a complement to Whole genome sequencing (WGS) to characterise Enterobacter cloacae , Citrobacter freundii and Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates recovered from hospital sinks.

The authors have withdrawn their manuscript due to becoming aware of methodology issues related to the curation of the training set used to determine cut-off values for Biotyper cluster assignation and lack of replicate measurements on different days for the isolates analysed. It is therefore unclear whether the conclusions of the manuscript are founded and no further work is possible to correct these issues as the instrument is no longer available to the authors. If you have any questions, please contact the corresponding author.

A splash-reducing clinical handwash basin reduces droplet-mediated dispersal from a sink contaminated with Gram-negative bacteria in a laboratory model system.

Infection prevention strategies need to be identified and evaluated to reduce the risk associated with contaminated hospital sinks. This study used settle plates to compare the dispersal of Gram-negative bacteria from a conventional, rear-draining clinical handwash basin (CHWB) and a 'splash-reducing' CHWB with and/or without impaired drainage. Two scenarios were assessed: dispersal from a contaminated basin and dispersal from a contaminated drain. The associated tap was operated for 1 min and, for all contamination scenarios, the 'splash-reducing' CHWB had significantly lower odds of spreading contamination than the conventional CHWB.