The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sounded an alarm about a dangerous fungus resistant to anti-fungal drugs spreading across healthcare facilities in the United States.
In a release issued on Monday, the agency warned that the fungus, Candida auris (C. auris), poses a risk for people who are sick, telling them to stay at healthcare facilities frequently or for longer periods away. It also poses an exceptionally high risk to those who are treated with “invasive medical devices.”
C. auris was first reported in the United States in 2016, and the number of its clinical cases has sharply increased in recent years, from 476 in 2019 to 1,471 in 2021, with the number of screening cases (i.e. cases where the detected fungus is not causing an infection) tripling between 2020 and 2021, when it reached 4,041.
The fungus also proved to be resistant to drugs such as echinocandins, which, as the CDC points out, are “most recommended” for treating C. auris.
“The rapid rise and geographic spread of cases is concerning and emphasizes the need for continued surveillance, expanded lab capacity, quicker diagnostic tests, and adherence to proven infection prevention and control,” said Dr. Meghan Lyman, CDC epidemiologist who authored a study on the subject recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The timing of this increase in C. auris cases may suggest that it was a result of the strain put by the COVID pandemic on healthcare and public health system in the US, CDC notes, adding that “poor general infection prevention and control practices in healthcare facilities” may also be to blame.