Are bacteria, like data and media, to be considered singular now? There was a woman on the radio this morning talking about how some babies in some hospital were found to have "a bacteria" on their skin.
d.
This makes me cringe for a different reason as well as the one you've highlighted. The babies were found to have a bacterium on their skin? Just the one? Bloody hell, that's some serious diagnostic kit they must have there. The concept of the individual when talking about bacteria is very fuzzy indeed. Most places measure the number of colony forming units of cultivatable strains, rather than cells. That's before we even get to the non-culturable strains. Without the context, it is difficult to know what this woman was trying to say - maybe the babies had a particular strain of bacteria.
I suspect Citoyen would like me to say bacterium here, but yes, in most scientifc uses, the term 'bacteria' is used for 'bacterium', except when refering to an individual cell. The concept of bacteria being singular is 'difficult'.