CDC: Drug-resistant infections cause about 50,800 U.S. deaths a year

What happened: CDC publishes its updated threats report

CDC's updated Antimicrobial Resistance Threats Report says the bacteria and fungi it tracks cause 9.7 million infections and 50,800 deaths each year in the U.S. The figures rest on 2023 data, as first reported by Healthline News.

The number is real and worth taking seriously. The framing that it has exploded since the last report is shakier, and CDC says so itself.

The 2026 update also changes format. It replaces the printed document and PDF with a website, according to CDC's report overview.

What the report actually says

The report covers 19 pathogens, sorted into 4 urgent threats, 13 serious threats and 2 concerning threats. It also keeps a separate Watch List of 6 pathogens, per CDC's pathogen page.

The four urgent threats are:

• Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus
• Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter
• Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales (CRE)
• Drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium that causes gonorrhea

CDC ranks threats on seven factors: clinical impact, economic impact, current infections, projected five-year change, transmissibility, preventability and availability of effective treatment.

The overall burden is CDC's aggregation of 2023 estimates for the 19 pathogens, . This is a modeled estimate, not a new cohort study. The headline figures we saw were single point estimates, without uncertainty ranges or a sample size.

What it does not show: a clean before-and-after

Many headlines set 9.7 million infections against the roughly 2.8 million reported for 2019 and imply a more-than-threefold increase. CDC says not to do that. It states that methods and data sources changed substantially for every pathogen except C. auris, so direct comparisons between reports should not be made.

Healthline's own article carries that caveat: CDC officials said part of the rise since 2019 is real, but the reports aren't directly comparable. The scope also widened, per CDC:

• Group A and group B Streptococcus used to count only invasive infections. They now include non-invasive ones.
• C. diff used to count only hospitalized cases. It now includes non-hospitalized cases.
• The ESBL category became ESC-RE and now includes Enterobacter species and Klebsiella aerogenes.
• Drug-resistant N. meningitidis is a new serious-threat addition.

So part of the bigger total comes from a wider net, not only from more disease.

The baselines don't line up cleanly either. Healthline gives 2019 as 2.8 million infections and 35,000 deaths. CDC's current overview describes the 2019 report as more than 2.6 million infections and nearly 44,000 deaths. That mismatch is another reason to skip the "up from" math.

What it means for you

Your individual risk depends heavily on your health and whether you are in a hospital or long-term care. This report doesn't give a personal risk number, and we won't pretend it does.

The precautions below come from experts quoted by Healthline. We did not check them against a CDC prevention page. None of them guarantees you won't get a resistant infection.

• Take antibiotics exactly as prescribed, and finish the course your clinician sets.
• Don't ask for antibiotics for viral illness. They don't work on viruses, and overuse is one driver of resistance, according to the experts Healthline quoted.
• Keep up with recommended vaccines.
• Wash your hands, especially around healthcare settings.

Context: where the evidence for "worsening" is stronger

If you want like-for-like trends, look to narrower data. CDC's 2024 update found that six hospital-onset resistant bacterial infections rose a combined 20% during COVID-19 compared with before the pandemic. They peaked in 2021 and stayed above baseline in 2022, per CDC.

The same page reports that clinical C. auris cases rose nearly five-fold from 2019 to 2022. C. auris is the one pathogen CDC treats as comparable across reports.

There is also a piece of good news that headlines skipped. C. diff moved from the urgent to the serious category. CDC credits infection-prevention actions and measured declines in healthcare settings since 2011, per its report page.

We did not independently verify several other figures in secondary coverage, including cost estimates, global death tolls and a reported CRE increase. We left them out.