{"id":661822,"date":"2026-03-17T10:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T10:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/661822\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T10:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T10:26:11","slug":"inside-new-yorks-superbug-crisis-and-the-bad-habit-thats-fueling-antibiotic-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/661822\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside New York’s ‘superbug’ crisis \u2014 and the bad habit that’s fueling antibiotic resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forget bedbugs<\/a> and cockroaches<\/a> \u2014 NYC is battling \u201csuperbugs\u201d that can\u2019t easily be quashed.<\/p>\n

Candida auris<\/a>, for one, survives on surfaces even after cleaning, frequently evades standard antifungal treatments and can trigger fatal bloodstream infections.<\/p>\n

New York has seen a steady increase in Candida auris cases since the state officially detected the dangerous fungus in 2016. Statewide last year<\/a>, there were 623 clinical cases (those who became sick from Candida auris) and 849 surveillance cases (those who tested positive but weren\u2019t ill).<\/p>\n

A study last year<\/a> determined that the NYC\/New Jersey metro area accounts for nearly 20% of the US\u2019s Candida auris cases, with researchers pinpointing high-volume travel and trade with South Asia as the source of the surge.<\/p>\n

Candida auris (pictured here) has emerged as a formidable threat in New York over the last decade. Dr_Microbe \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Candida auris isn\u2019t the only savage superbug waging germ warfare in NYC \u2014 medical experts warn that overuse of antibiotics is fueling a rise in \u201cnightmare bacteria\u201d<\/a> that have developed resistance to most known drugs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen somebody has a viral illness, they have a respiratory cold, [an] antibiotic [will] have zero benefit to them, but will have more potential toxicity, both in terms of side effects and reactions, but also in the development of resistance,\u201d Dr. Aaron Glatt<\/a>, professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at Mount Sinai South Nassau<\/a>, told The Post.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe entire opportunity here is for people to use the antibiotics appropriately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antibiotics should be used to treat or prevent bacterial infections such as strep throat, urinary tract infections and bacterial pneumonia.<\/p>\n

They shouldn\u2019t be used to address viral infections like colds, flu, COVID-19 or most sore throats because they are ineffective against these ailments and contribute to antibiotic resistance.<\/p>\n

Bacteria primarily develop antibiotic resistance through natural genetic mutations. These resistant strains then spread their genetic material to other bacteria.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t take that antibiotic if you don\u2019t have a bacterial infection! It can do more harm than good. joyfotoliakid \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Last fall, the World Health Organization noted<\/a> that 1 in 6 bacterial infections were resistant to common antibiotic treatments. In fact, the agency reported that antibiotic resistance rose by an average of 5% to 15% annually between 2018 and 2023.<\/p>\n

This problem snowballed during the COVID-19 pandemic because many patients with mild to moderate cases of the coronavirus unnecessarily received antibiotics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a combination of patients requesting \u2026 antibiotics when they don\u2019t need them,\u201d Glatt said. \u201cIt\u2019s also incumbent upon physicians to say, \u2018No, this disease is not treated with an antibiotic.’\u201d<\/p>\n

There is some reassuring news \u2014 though Candida auris has become more prevalent in New York, the fungus primarily spreads within healthcare facilities like nursing homes and hospitals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not something that is of great concern to the typical person on the street,\u201d Glatt said, \u201cbut it is especially concerning for patients from nursing homes and \u2026 patients who receive multiple antibiotics and are very sick themselves and they\u2019re immunocompromised.\u201d<\/p>\n

Encouragingly, new drugs have shown effectiveness<\/a> against certain types of resistant bacteria, such as E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae.<\/p>\n

Klebsiella pneumoniae (pictured here) is considered a \u201cnightmare bacteria\u201d because it\u2019s resistant to nearly all antibiotics and causes severe, often fatal infections. REUTERS<\/p>\n

Federal bipartisan legislation \u2014 first proposed in 2020<\/a> and reintroduced last month \u2014 aims to replenish the antibiotic pipeline to continue the battle against nightmare bacteria.<\/p>\n

The Pioneering Antimicrobial Subscriptions to End Upsurging Resistance (PASTEUR) Act<\/a> would ensure payments to pharmaceutical companies based on the value and innovation of their new antibiotics instead of the number of drugs they sell.<\/p>\n

This Netflix-like \u201csubscription\u201d model is designed to stabilize the market and encourage research.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Netflix model says the government will pay the pharmaceutical [companies] a flat fee for the access to these antibiotics, no matter how much is used or not,\u201d Glatt explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis way, the pharmaceutical industry would be adequately reimbursed with [research and development] that they do,\u201d he continued, \u201cand at the same time, if the drug gets used a lot, it won\u2019t be as expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Forget bedbugs and cockroaches \u2014 NYC is battling \u201csuperbugs\u201d that can\u2019t easily be quashed. Candida auris, for one,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":661823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,23053,6335,210,37416,2934,1184,5248,113226,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,16728,159,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,13203],"class_list":["post-661822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-bacteria","tag-exclusive","tag-health","tag-infections","tag-legislation","tag-medicine","tag-metro","tag-mount-sinai-hospital","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-pandemics","tag-science","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-virus"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}