Six Silent Killers Identified as Major Threats by CDC 

Six Silent Killers Identified as Major Threats by CDC. Credit | Getty Images
Six Silent Killers Identified as Major Threats by CDC. Credit | Getty Images

United States: Health officials are now sounding the warning alarm that six “‘silent killers” are developing resistance to the drugs that are normally used to tackle them. 

More about the news 

The CDC released a new report Thursday on antimicrobial resistance threats, finding that infections with six of the hard-to-treat germs increased at least 20 percent throughout the Covid pandemic compared to 2019 and remained high through 2022, which is the latest year that data was available, as DailyMail reported. 

Of particular concern was one of the antifungal-resistant fungus, which can be fatal and tends to spread through healthcare centers. 

Six Silent Killers Identified as Major Threats by CDC. Credit | Getty Images
Six Silent Killers Identified as Major Threats by CDC. Credit | Getty Images

Incidents of this, Candida auris, rose five times from 2019 to the year 2022. 

Officials noticed almost Thirty Thousand people lost their lives to antimicrobial-resistant infections in 2020. Still, the figure was a major calculation of the problem and stated that the death toll of 35,000 people per year, cited in 2019, was a lot more plausible. 

A growing worry about emerging infection cases 

The rise is making the health management worried following the rise in associated death counts from the bacterias which were earlier considered easily controllable. 

According to the CDC’s latest report, which covered seven hospital pathogens, it has been observed that infection rates with six of the pathogens are higher than in years preceding the Covid pandemic. 

Of the six, five are drug-resistant bacteria, and the sixth is a drug-resistant fungus, as DailyMail reported. 

These diseases include Carbapenem-resistant enterobacterales (CRE), carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter, Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE), Extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL), multi-drug resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Candida auris (C. auris). 

Among the seven drug-resistant pathogens and their cases, only MRSA did not show an increase from 2019 to 2022. 

Poor infection control measures, such as failing to wash hands or replace personal protective gear before handling patients from a different setting, expose these bugs to other patients and the general public within and beyond the hospital setting.