Antibiotic resistance occurs when disease-causing microbes

Last updated: 7/18/2022

Antibiotic resistance occurs when disease-causing microbes no longer respond to antibiotic drug therapy. Because such resistance is typically genetic and transferred to the next generations of microbes, it is a very serious public health problem. Gonorrhea is the second most commonly reported notifiable disease in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 27% of gonorrhea cases tested in 2010 were resistant to at least one of the three major antibiotics commonly used to treat this sexually transmitted disease. The CDC reported that 38% of gonorrhea cases tested in 2014 were resistant to at least one of the three major antibiotics commonly used to treat gonorrhea. (a) In 2010, out of 10 randomly selected gonorrhea cases, what is the mean of the count of cases X showing resistance to at least one of the three major antibiotics? (Enter your answer rounded to one decimal place.)