A new strain of Salmonella Typhi that is resistant to the antibiotics typically used to treat typhoid fever had infected at least 71 people in the United States as of Jan. 14, according to CDC, in today's bite-sized hospital and health industry news from Georgia, Maryland, and Missouri.

• Georgia: A new strain of Salmonella Typhi that is resistant to the antibiotics typically used to treat typhoid fever had infected at least 71 people in the United States as of Jan. 14, according to CDC. The new strain of the bacteria caused an outbreak in the Sindh province of Pakistan in 2016 and has since spread throughout the country. According to CDC, 58 of the 71 people in the United States who were infected with the stain reported traveling to Pakistan in the 30 days before their illness began, but nine of the U.S. residents had not left the country in the 30 days preceding their infection, marking "the first time cases of ceftriaxone-resistant Typhi infections have been identified in the United States that don't appear to have been acquired during international travel," Louise Francois Watkins, a medical officer at CDC's Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch, said (Harrison, Medscape, 2/17).

• Maryland: Encompass Health is building a 60-bed inpatient rehabilitation hospital in Bowie, Maryland, that the health system expects to open in mid-2022. The new hospital will be part of Encompass Health's national network, which is based in Birmingham, Alabama. The health system currently runs 137 inpatient rehabilitation hospitals nationwide (Patchen, Birmingham Business Journal, 2/19).

• Missouri: St. Mary's Hospital-Audrain has named Amy O'Brien as its new CEO. O'Brien most recently served as VP of physician practices at Great River Health Systems in Iowa and also formerly served as Great River's director of integrated services. Before that, O'Brien served as administrative director of Portneuf Medical Center in Idaho (Gooch, Becker's Hospital Review, 2/19; Faries, The Mexico Ledger, 2/18).