State IDs LI Hospitals, Nursing Homes With Deadly Fungus Cases

A new report released by the New York State Department of Health has identified many Long Island hospitals and long-term care facilities where a drug-resistant super fungus was found.

The report identified seven hospitals and 10 long-term care facilities on Long Island where patients were identified as being infected with the fungus Candida auris, or C. auris. According to the DOH, C. auris is a drug-resistant fungus that can cause lethal infections in patients.

It has mainly spread in New York City and surrounding areas. In the two years the state DOH has been tracking C. auris, infections have increased more than five times, going from 26 confirmed cases in 2016 to 132 in 2018. The average age of patients infected was 69, the DOH said.

"C. auris has been found in health care facilities throughout the New York City metropolitan area," the DOH report reads. "It is not a problem particular to any one facility but rather a challenge for all facilities in the region, regardless of whether C. auris has thus far been identified there."

The Long Island hospitals where the DOH said C. auris was found are:

• North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset
• Glen Cove Hospital, Glen Cove
• Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital, Oceanside
• NYU Winthrop Hospital, Mineola
• Huntington Hospital, Huntington
• Southside Hospital, Bay Shore
• Stony Brook University Hospital, Stony Brook

The long-term care facilities are:

• Excel at Woodbury for Rehabilitation and Nursing, LLC, Woodbury
• Fulton Commons Care Center Inc., East Meadow
• Meadowbrook Care Center, Inc., Freeport
• Nassau Rehabilitation & Nursing Center, Hempstead
• South Shore Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, Freeport
• Sunharbor Manor, Roslyn
• The Five Towns Premier Rehabilitation & Nursing Center, Woodmere
• The Grand Rehabilitation and Nursing at South Point, Island Park
• Townhouse Center for Rehabilitation & Nursing, Uniondale
• Medford Multicare Center for Living, Medford

Click here for the full list of hospitals and long-term care facilities where C. auris was identified in New York.

However, the state DOH stressed that, because of the difficulty of treating C. auris and its long incubation period, people should not use the list to decide where to seek care. It also stressed that being named on the list doesn't reflect on the institution's quality of care.

"Inclusion on these lists of impacted facilities does not necessarily imply that the patient or resident acquired C. auris at that facility," the report reads. "Persons who are colonized or infected with C. auris tend to have multiple serious medical problems and frequent admissions and transfers to different hospitals or [long-term care facilities]. Because a person can be asymptomatically colonized for an indeterminate period, it is not usually possible to determine where C. auris was acquired."

According to the CDC, C. auris usually infects people who are already sick, so diagnosing it can be difficult. It can infect the blood and organs, causing a fever that does not go away after treatment with antibiotics. More than 1 in 3 patients with an invasive C. auris infection die, according to the CDC.

"All facilities in highly affected communities might care for patients or residents who are colonized or infected with C. auris, whether known or unknown," the DOH report concludes. "This illustrates the need for careful and thorough routine infection control, including environmental cleaning and disinfection, in every health care facility."