The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that drug resistance now drives 9.7 million infections and 50,800 deaths a year in the United States. The latest Antimicrobial Resistance Threats Report also puts roughly 40,000 of those deaths in the category of health care-associated infections.
Wendy Armstrong, a clinician and president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said, "These numbers are alarming by any measure but are particularly sobering when infectious diseases physicians connect real patients with these statistics in their everyday experience". She also said, "And that’s honestly terrifying."
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report
The report is the newest version of the CDC’s long-running threat assessment and the most comprehensive since 2019. It says health care-associated infections have driven almost $12 billion in health care costs, a figure that puts a price tag on the same infections behind many of the deaths.
The CDC first released the Antimicrobial Resistance Threats Report in 2013. In 2019, it published a broader tally focused on 18 drug-resistant microbes and estimated around 2.8 million infections and 35,000 deaths each year. Tuesday’s update uses 2023 data and raises that estimate to 9.7 million infections and 50,800 deaths.
Wendy Armstrong on drug resistance
Armstrong’s comments reflect the patient-level impact behind the numbers. She linked the statistics to day-to-day infectious diseases practice, where resistant infections are not abstract counts but cases seen in real time.
The report also narrows the list of the most worrying germs to 19 superbugs, divided into four urgent threats, 13 serious threats and two concerning threats, with six other germs on a watch list. Drug-resistant Neisseria meningitidis was added as a serious threat.
Clostridioides difficile and Candida auris
The CDC said some drug-resistant infections have been curbed, but the overall annual toll continues to rise. Rates of drug-resistant Clostridioides difficile began to lower in 2018 and have remained stable since 2020, and the germ was downgraded from an urgent to a serious threat.
At the same time, infections caused by Candidozyma auris have surged tenfold since 2019. Some strains have displayed resistance to practically all available antifungals, and certain genes conferring resistance to precious antibiotics are spreading widely between bacteria.
For people in the United States, the practical takeaway is direct: the CDC’s latest count puts a far larger burden on the country than its 2019 estimate, even as a few infections have eased. The report leaves the same urgent burden on hospitals and clinicians that Armstrong described — patients are still arriving with infections that are harder to treat, and the national numbers are still climbing.
