CDC warns of drug-resistant, deadly fungus: How is it spread?

(NEXSTAR) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified Candida auris as an “urgent” threat as it spreads rapidly through U.S. hospitals, tripling in just three years. The fungus is spreading “at an alarming rate,” the CDC says, but how exactly is it spreading?

This fungus likely originated in a health care setting, explained Melissa Nolan, an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of South Carolina. Counterintuitively, because hospitals are disinfected so frequently, they can be the birthplace of bacteria or fungus that are resistant to antimicrobial cleaning products and to treatments.

“If you think about the amount of cleaning that we do in the hospital versus what you do at home, it’s significantly greater in a hospital setting. So every time we’re spraying Clorox … that just creates the opportunity for more resistance,” Nolan explained. “Over time, those pathogens have been able to evolve and adapt to resistance.”

Candida auris is especially good at developing on surfaces, Nolan explained. Once it grows and populates in a hospital room, for example, it is most likely to infect a patient through a medical device, like a catheter or a PICC line that delivers medicine or fluids straight into the bloodstream.

Fungus an ‘urgent’ threat, already in these 28 states: CDC

“Imagine a patient that’s been in the hospital for two weeks, for example. Even though they’re cleaning those lines regularly, you still have the opportunity for this pathogen to get on that piece of plastic equipment and then get into your bloodstream,” said Nolan.

The fungus can also enter somebody’s system through ears or wounds, the Associated Press reports.

It could transmit by touch if someone touches an infected surface, then touches a piece of medical equipment that would enter a patient’s body. But people who are just visiting a loved one in the hospital or in a nursing home, for example, are not likely to become infected.