Hospitals know how to reduce or stop staph infections. So why are thousands still dying?

Nearly 120,000 people contracted bloodstream staph infections in the United States in 2017, most of them in health care facilities – and nearly 20,000 died. Progress against the most dangerous antibiotic-resistant staph infections in hospitals stalled after dropping an average of about 17 percent per year from 2005 to 2013, according to data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.