Unrecognized he alth hazard
Globally, more than 1.5 million people succumb to a fungal infection every year. The microorganisms, which have received little attention up to now, represent an increasing threat - also due to environmental changes.
At the end of June 2020, Tom Chiller stared at his computer in shock. The doctor and epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta normally monitors the he alth risks from fungi. However, he had to leave this specialist area for the time being in March 2020, when the threat posed by the novel coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 crystallized and the CDC had sent almost all of its thousands of employees to work from home. Since then, Chiller has been involved in the CDC's frustrating and repeatedly torpedoed efforts to contain the rapid spread of the virus in the United States. Meanwhile, the second wave of the Covid 19 pandemic rolled across the country; more than 2.4 million Americans had already been infected and 125,000 had died.
But now a forwarded email made Chiller suspicious. Hospitals near Los Angeles, struggling to cope with the rapidly increasing number of corona cases, reported a new problem: Some of their intensive care patients also suffered from severe infections with a fungus called Candida auris.
Chiller probably knows yeast better than anyone in the United States…
