‘Superbug’ Fungus Spreads Among Vulnerable in Two U.S. Cities

FRIDAY, July 23, 2021 (HealthDay News) — An untreatable “superbug” fungus is spreading in a Washington, D.C., nursing home and two Dallas-area hospitals, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

There were 101 Candida auris cases at the nursing home and 22 cases at the hospitals from January to April, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which did not identify the facilities, the Associated Press reported. Three of the patients at the nursing home and two at the hospitals had infections that were resistant to all three major classes of antifungal medications. Of those patients, both patients in Texas and one in Washington died.

Both outbreaks are ongoing and more infections have been identified since April, but the CDC did not release those additional numbers, the AP reported.

For years, health officials have sounded alarms about the drug-resistant C. auris after seeing infections in which commonly used medicines had little effect. In 2019, doctors diagnosed three cases in New York that were also resistant to echinocandins, considered a last line of defense, the AP reported.

Associated Press Article