Pandemic-related lapses in infection control practices may have caused an outbreak of multidrug-resistant Candida auris yeast infections in a Florida hospital’s coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) unit, investigators from the CDC and the Florida Department of Health reported.
A growing public health threat in the US, C auris can cause life-threatening and difficult-to-treat infections in hospitalized patients. Florida has tracked C auris cases since 2017 to limit their spread. After the state’s health department received reports last July about 3 cases in a hospital’s dedicated COVID-19 unit, additional screening found that 52% of 67 COVID-19 patients in the unit were colonized with the yeast.