Candida auris infections are rising in U.S. healthcare facilities, with the CDC’s current tracker listing 6,304 reported clinical cases in 2024.
The drug-resistant yeast can linger on skin and hospital surfaces, spread silently from people without symptoms, and cause life-threatening infections in medically vulnerable patients.
For patients and visitors, careful hand hygiene, sharing past healthcare exposures, and asking about infection-control precautions are the most practical protections.
While much of the country is focused on the Cyclospora outbreak caused by a parasite on fresh produce, a hard-to-treat fungus that can survive for months on skin and hospital surfaces is continuing to gain ground in U.S. healthcare facilities. It’s intensifying pressure on hospitals and nursing homes to find cases early and prevent silent transmission.
The organism, Candida auris — recently reclassified scientifically as Candidozyma auris — is a type of yeast first reported in the United States in 2016. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC's) current tracker lists 6,304 clinical cases reported in 2024, the latest full year shown, and says cases have increased nationally and appeared in new areas.
A CDC surveillance report published in July 2026, based on an earlier data cutoff, counted 6,197 clinical cases for 2024, up from 2,882 in 2022. Such totals can change as health departments update reports.
The increase does not mean most Americans are in immediate danger. Healthy people generally do not become infected or colonized. The greatest risk falls on patients who are already seriously ill, immunocompromised, or receiving prolonged care, especially those with invasive devices such as breathing tubes, feeding tubes, central lines, or urinary catheters.
Why the fungus is so difficult to contain
Unlike many other Candida species, C. auris spreads readily among patients in hospitals, long-term acute-care hospitals, and ventilator-capable nursing facilities. It can colonize the skin or other body sites without producing symptoms, allowing a person to carry and transmit it unknowingly.
Both colonized and infected patients can shed the organism onto bed rails, bedside tables, medical equipment and other surfaces. The CDC says it can persist in healthcare environments for months and is not killed by some commonly used disinfectants.
That combination creates an unusually stubborn hospital threat. A patient may move between an acute-care hospital, a rehabilitation center, and a nursing facility before colonization is detected. If the patient’s status is not communicated during each transfer, the next facility may miss the chance to use appropriate precautions, screen exposed patients, and disinfect rooms with a product known to work against the fungus.
Detection can also be challenging. Symptoms vary according to where the infection occurs — such as the bloodstream, a wound, or an ear — and many affected patients are already ill from other conditions. Specialized laboratory testing is often needed to identify the organism correctly.
Drug resistance raises the stakes
The central danger is not colonization itself but the possibility that C. auris will enter the bloodstream or another normally sterile part of the body. These invasive infections can be fatal, particularly in patients with severe underlying illness. Reported crude mortality rates are high, but researchers caution that many patients are critically ill, making it difficult to determine how much mortality is caused by the fungus alone.
Treatment options can be narrow. More than 90% of U.S. samples are resistant to fluconazole, a commonly used antifungal, according to the CDC. Most strains remain susceptible to echinocandins, the recommended first-line treatment for many patients, but echinocandin-resistant and rare pan-resistant strains — those resistant to all three major antifungal classes — have been reported.
Only clinical infections should be treated; finding the organism on the skin without signs of infection does not by itself call for antifungal medication.
What patients and families can do
For most people, protection begins with the same measure that blocks many healthcare-associated infections: clean hands. Patients and visitors should use alcohol-based hand sanitizer or wash with soap and water before and after touching a patient, medical equipment, or objects near the bed. They can also remind healthcare workers to clean their hands before providing care.
Patients who have previously tested positive for C. auris should tell every hospital, nursing facility, home-health agency, and clinician involved in their care — even if they feel well. People recently hospitalized abroad or treated in a facility with known transmission should share that history, because it may affect screening and infection-control decisions.
Families can ask practical questions:
Is the facility using recommended gowns and gloves when needed?
Is shared equipment disinfected between patients?
Is the room being cleaned with a product effective against C. auris?
Hospitals may place colonized or infected patients in single rooms or use other transmission-based precautions; those measures are designed to protect other patients, not to deny care.
At home, healthy household members face a low risk. Routine hand hygiene remains important, particularly before and after helping with wound care or handling medical devices. People should not use antifungal medicines preventively unless a clinician prescribes them.