[ad_1]
More than 100 patients from a U.S. nursing home and two hospitals have been infected with an incurable fungus, including three victims who died, federal officials said.
Ongoing outbreaks of the drug-resistant ‘superbug’ Candida auris in a Washington, DC nursing home and two Dallas, Texas area hospitals were reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday. .
The drug-resistant strain, which brings fever and chills, appears to have spread patient-to-patient for the first time in the United States. Previous cases diagnosed in New York City in 2019 were also drug resistant, but there was no indication that these patients had transmitted the virus to each other.
The harmful form of yeast was first identified in 2009 in Asia before it spread around the world, according to a CDC fact sheet.
The 123 cases at two Dallas-area hospitals and a nursing home in Washington were identified from January through April. Three of the five patients who did not respond to treatment have died, including two in Texas and one in Washington, according to CDC officials.
Additional infections have also been identified since April, but those figures were not included in Thursday’s post.
“This is the first time that we have seen clusters of pan-resistant C. auris, suggesting a spread in US healthcare facilities,” CDC’s Dr Meghan Lyman said in a statement.
“Although we have only seen a small number of cases, it is likely that there are more unidentified cases,” Lyman said. “We therefore urge healthcare institutions to take proactive measures to identify and prevent the spread of this fungus so that it does not gain a foothold in their patient population.”
The fungus began to spread in the United States in 2015, with a 318% increase in the number of cases reported in 2018 from the average number reported from 2015 to 2017, CDC officials said.
It is not known why four different strains of the fungus emerged around the world around the same time, all of which were identified in the United States. Cases have been reported in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, California, Indiana and several other states.
More than 587 cases in the United States were identified by the CDC in 2019, with most of the confirmed infections occurring in New York hospitals. An elderly man died at Mount Sinai Hospital in May 2018 from the virus after abdominal surgery, The Post reported in April 2019.
“It sounds scary, and it is,” Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in May 2019 while calling on the CDC to declare a medical emergency. “It’s a fungus that has no cure, and it’s tough.”
The bug, which typically infects people with pre-existing illnesses, then spread throughout New Jersey, with 141 cases reported in December 2019.
According to the CDC, up to 60% of people infected with Candida auris have died.
“However, many of these people suffered from other serious illnesses which also increased their risk of death,” the agency said.
With post wires
[ad_2]
Source link