US hospitals see infections from a drug-resistant fungus double in three years

Clinical infections from Candida auris, a fungus classified as an “urgent” antimicrobial threat due to its resistance to multiple antifungal drugs, have more than doubled in the United States over three years: from 2,882 cases in 2022 to 6,197 in 2024, according to a surveillance report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This news currently comes from a single source — the CDC surveillance report, reported without additional independent elements —; confirmation from other health sources regarding the reported data is not available.

According to the CDC, the organism typically colonizes the skin of patients hospitalized or receiving care in long-term facilities, usually without causing harm. In more fragile patients, however, it can enter the bloodstream, causing infections that are often fatal.

The health agency specifies that the majority of people affected by the invasive form already had, at the time of infection, serious clinical conditions and a compromised state of health, a factor that complicates the assessment of the fungus’s direct impact on the mortality observed.

In 2026, according to the same surveillance data, more than 3,000 clinical cases were reported across more than twenty US states. These are data collected through hospital surveillance systems, which by their nature record cases identified and reported by healthcare facilities and not necessarily the complete set of infections present in the area.

The CDC does not provide, in the available material, guidance on treatment or individual prevention, but frames the rise in cases as a matter of epidemiological surveillance and risk management within healthcare facilities, given the fungus’s resistance to multiple classes of antifungal drugs. The agency also points to the need to strengthen infection control protocols in facilities where the pathogen circulates more frequently.