CDC Tracks 3,437 Drug-Resistant Fungus Cases Across 27 States This Year

The numbers, straight from the CDC

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 3,437 clinical cases of Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus, had been identified across 27 states as of the week ending July 25, 2026. That's down from 4,290 cases at the same point in 2025, according to ABC News, which first reported on the updated CDC data.

California leads the country with 873 cases. Texas is next with 433. Tennessee follows with 283. Those three states alone account for nearly half the national total.

The fungus, formally described as a new species in 2009 and first detected in the United States in 2016, has spread to every region of the country since then. CDC data shows clinical cases have risen every year since that first U.S. case, though the agency says the rate of increase has slowed since 2022.

Who actually gets sick

This isn't a fungus healthy people need to lose sleep over. The CDC is blunt about who's at risk: patients with severe underlying medical conditions who need complex medical care.

That means people with breathing tubes, catheters, feeding tubes, and similar equipment. Those already weakened by antibiotics or antifungal drugs before or after surgery face higher risk too, because those treatments can suppress the immune response that would otherwise fight the fungus off.

Someone can carry C. auris without ever showing symptoms, a condition the CDC calls colonization. That's part of what makes it dangerous in hospitals. A colonized patient can spread the fungus to doorknobs, bedrails, and shared medical equipment without knowing it, and the next patient who touches that equipment can pick it up.

Symptoms, when they show up, depend on where the infection lands: ear infections, wound infections, urinary tract infections, or bloodstream infections that spread through the whole body, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Bloodstream infections are the ones that turn life-threatening fast, particularly in patients who are already critically ill.

Why drugs barely touch it

A CDC paper published in February found that more than 95% of 8,033 C. auris samples collected in 2022 and 2023 were resistant to fluconazole, a standard antifungal drug. Fifteen percent were resistant to amphotericin B. One percent were resistant to echinocandins.

The good news buried in that data: fewer than 1% of samples were resistant to all three drug classes at once. Doctors still have options, just fewer good ones than they'd like.

"Our findings highlight the persistence of C. auris as a multidrug-resistant threat requiring sustained investment in laboratory capacity for early detection and response," the paper's authors wrote.

CDC epidemiologist Dr. Meghan Lyman put it more directly, according to Medindia: "The rapid rise and geographic spread of cases is concerning," she said, stressing the need for surveillance, lab capacity, and infection-control measures.

The case count is messier than it looks

Earlier reports, based on CDC data through July 18, cited cases in 23 states with national totals slightly above 3,100. A week later, the July 25 update showed 27 states and 3,437 cases. That's not the fungus suddenly spreading to four new states in seven days. It's how surveillance data works.

The CDC's own guidance explains that published totals shift depending on the reporting period, and whether a given count reflects clinical cases, screening cases, individual specimens, or individual patients. Numbers can also change depending on whether a case is credited to the patient's home state or the state where the lab sample was actually taken. Health departments submit, verify, and reconcile these numbers over time, so the same week's data can look different depending on when you check it.

That's a legitimate reason for skepticism about any single snapshot number. But it's a data-lag problem, not evidence the CDC is hiding or manipulating anything. No source here suggests the agency is undercounting or overcounting for any reason other than the normal mechanics of state health departments reporting on different timelines.

What's actually changed and what hasn't

The year-over-year drop, from 4,290 cases through late July 2025 to 3,437 through the same point in 2026, is real. But a lower year-to-date total doesn't mean the threat has gone away, and none of the CDC's own materials suggest complacency is warranted.

The fungus has now reached 27 states since its first detection in the U.S. a decade ago, and it's still notching new cases every year. The bigger question CDC officials are watching isn't this year's total. It's whether hospitals nationwide have the lab capacity and infection-control discipline to keep a fungus that shrugs off frontline antifungal drugs from spreading further among the sickest patients in the country.