An emerging fungal threat prompting warnings in the US will inevitably make its way to New Zealand's shores, a leading epidemiologist says.
The fungus is spreading at an alarming rate overseas as it resists treatment and disinfectants.
"I think the general feeling is it's inevitable we will see this fungal infection in New Zealand at some point," Prominent University of Otago epidemiologist Dr Michael Baker told Newshub.
While the fungus poses a low threat to most people, vulnerable patients including immunocompromised, young children and the elderly are at high risk from the infection.
Dr Baker said the fungus is generally a "hospital-acquired infection" and once it gets into a healthcare facility it is hard to get rid of.
"It's hard to disinfect because you have to use very effective cleaning methods to get it out of the healthcare facility once it's in there so that makes it difficult," Dr Baker said.
"Once it's in there it often moves between facilities… So it needs very good infection control processes to stop its spread."
Dr Baker is unaware of any cases of Candida auris in New Zealand, however, the fungus has been detected in low numbers in Australia since 2018.
The US government agency Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has called Candida auris an "urgent threat" because it is often multidrug-resistant, easily spreads through healthcare facilities and can cause deadly disease. It is also resistant to some common disinfectants and can be carried on people's skin without causing symptoms, facilitating its spread to others.
Back in 2019, the CDC said based on information from a limited number of patients, 30 to 60 percent of people with Candida auris infections have died. However, many of these people had other serious illnesses that also increased their risk of death. Recent numbers on death from the virus is unknown.
"It's actually quite unusual to have severe fungal infections and most of the harm from microbes is bacteria and viruses so fungi don't really cause many serious illnesses or deaths in humans," Dr Baker said.
Candida auris was first detected in 2009 and has steadily increased in number since then. However, the fungus has recently made global headlines after research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found cases in the US have been rapidly increasing since 2019 from a couple hundred to thousands of infections.
"The rapid rise and geographic spread of cases is concerning and emphasises the need for continued surveillance, expanded lab capacity, quicker diagnostic tests, and adherence to proven infection prevention and control," CDC said in a media release on Monday (local time).
Dr Baker said the rise of Candida auris reflects the increasing problem of anti-microbial resistance.
"There is a wider problem of increasing anti-microbial resistance and that is a real threat because we are accustomed to our antibiotics working," Dr Baker said.
"Microbes keep evolving and this is one of those great problems, anti-microbial resistance, across the globe and this organism is part of that problem."
