Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections (SAB, or ‘golden staph’) associated with hospital care can be serious, particularly when bacteria are resistant to common antimicrobials.
In 2018–19, all states and territories had public hospital SAB infection rates below the national benchmark of 2.0 cases per 10,000 patient days.
Over the past 5 years, the SAB infection rate has remained stable, for instance, 0.79 in 2014–15 and 0.75 in 2018–19.