It's a bird, it's a plane -- no, it's Superbug! Except there's nothing super about the effect the new bug is having across the country.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced this week that a drug-resistant and deadly fungus has infected at least 7,000 people in 2025 and it's resistant to antibiotics. Hence, the name Superbug.
Twenty-seven states have reported outbreaks of the bug, and its exponential growth is mostly because temperatures are getting warmer, experts say. “We have tremendous protection against environmental fungi because of our temperature. However, if the world is getting warmer and the fungi begin to adapt to higher temperatures as well, some … are going to reach what I call the temperature barrier, where they’ll be able to survive in the human body," microbiologist Arturo Casadevall, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, told the Associated Press.
The bug is actually a fungus, and it's real name is Candida auris. While first reported in the U.S. in 2016, it has spread rapidly over the past several years, especially in hospitals, nursing homes and other places where transmission patient-to-patient is easy. Experts say that's because it can survive on surfaces for long periods of time before "spreading to patients through catheters, breathing tubes or IVs."
The best way to treat it is to basically to avoid getting it in the first place through thorough hand washing and whatever else you can do because there really is no treatment that works, experts say.
“If you get infected with this pathogen that’s resistant to any treatment, there’s no treatment we can give you to help combat it. You’re all on your own,” Melissa Nolan, an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of South Carolina, told Nexstar.
The CDC added that, infection levels are approaching last year’s record-breaking figure of more than 7,500 cases.