NY.- A deadly fungus that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers an urgent threat to public health has spread at an “alarming rate” during the pandemic, the CDC said Monday.
The fungus, called Candida auris, feeds mainly on older people with weakened immune systems and is particularly dangerous because it resists treatment with common antifungal drugs. C. auris was first reported in the United States in 2016, showing up most notably in New York and Illinois, where public health officials hoped to contain it through rigorous screening and infection control in long-term care facilities and homes. of elderly.
But over the course of 2021, state and local health departments across the country reported 1,474 clinical cases, an increase of about 200 percent from the nearly 500 cases in 2019.
The increase is “dramatic” in the number of cases and transmission of C. auris, according to a research article published Monday in the Annals of Medicine and compiled by CDC researchers. The fungus is now found in half of the 50 states , many with only a handful of cases, but with higher concentrations in California, Nevada, Texas, and Florida.
The new paper did not include the 2022 caseload. However, the CDC website that tracks the spread of the fungus shows there were 2,377 reported infections last year, another sharp increase.
