Emergence of Candida auris in Brazil in a COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit
João Nóbrega de Almeida, Elaine Cristina Francisco, Ferry Hagen, Igor Brasil Brandão, Felicidade Mota Pereira, Pedro Henrique Presta Dias, Magda Machado de Miranda Costa, Regiane T. de Souza Jordão, Theun de Groot, Arnaldo Lopes Colombo
Abstract
In December 2020, Candida auris emerged in Brazil in the city of Salvador. The first two C. auris colonized patients were in the same COVID-19 intensive care unit. Antifungal susceptibility testing showed low minimal inhibitory concentrations of 1 µg/mL, 2 µg/mL, 0.03 µg/L, and 0.06 µg/mL for amphotericin B, fluconazole, voriconazole, and anidulafungin, respectively. Microsatellite typing revealed that the strains are clonal and belong to the South Asian clade C. auris. The travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic and the absence of travel history among the colonized patients lead to the hypothesis that this species was introduced several months before the recognition of the first case and/or emerged locally in the coastline Salvador area.