"Nightmare bacteria" with unusual resistance to antibiotics of last resort were found more than 200 times in the United States last year in a first-of-a-kind hunt to see how much of a threat these rare cases are becoming, health officials said Tuesday.
FILE- This undated file illustration made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta depicts Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria, one of the germs that can evolve to resist antibiotics. (CDC via AP, File)
That's more than they had expected to find, and the true number is probably higher because the effort involved only certain labs in each state, officials say.
The problem mostly strikes people in hospitals and nursing homes who need IVs and other tubes that can get infected. In many cases, others in close contact with these patients also harbored the superbugs even though they weren't sick — a risk for further spread.
Some of the sick patients had traveled for surgery or other health care to another country where drug-resistant germs are more common, and the superbug infections were discovered after they returned to the U.S.
"Essentially, we found nightmare bacteria in your backyard," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"These verge on untreatable infections" where the only option may be supportive care — fluids and sometimes machines to maintain life to give the patient a chance to recover, Schuchat said.
The situation was described in a CDC report.
Bugs and drugs are in a constant battle, as germs evolve to resist new and old antibiotics. About 2 million Americans get infections from antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year and 23,000 die, Schuchat said.
Concern has been growing about a rise in bacteria resistant to all or most antibiotics. Last year, public health labs around the country were asked to watch for and quickly respond to cases of advanced antibiotic resistance, especially to some last-resort antibiotics called carbapenems.
In the first nine months of the year, more than 5,770 samples were tested for these "nightmare bacteria," as CDC calls them, and one quarter were found to have genes that make them hard to treat and easy to share their resistance tricks with other types of bacteria. Of these, 221 had unusual genes that conferred resistance. The cases were scattered throughout 27 states.
"Even in remote areas" this threat is real, because patients often transfer to and from other places for care, said Dr. Jay Butler, chief medical officer for the state of Alaska and past president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
Others in close contact with the infected patient then were tested, and 11 percent were found to be carrying the same superbugs even though they were not sick. This gives the bugs more of a chance to spread.
What to do? CDC suggests:
—Tell your doctors if you recently had health care in another country.
—Talk with them about preventing infections, taking care of chronic conditions to help avoid them, and getting vaccines to prevent them.
—Wash your hands regularly and keep cuts clean until healed.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday announced the outlines of a health care plan he wants Congress to take up as Republicans have faced increasing pressure to address rising health costs after lawmakers let subsidies expire.
The cornerstone is his proposal to send money directly to Americans for health savings accounts so they can handle insurance and health costs as they see fit. Democrats have rejected the idea as a paltry substitute for the tax credits that had helped lower monthly premiums for many people.
“The government is going to pay the money directly to you,” Trump said in a taped video the White House released to announce the plan. “It goes to you and then you take the money and buy your own health care.”
Trump's plan also focuses on lowering drug prices and requiring insurers to be more upfront with the public about costs, revenues, rejected claims and wait times for care.
Trump has long been dogged by his lack of a comprehensive health care plan as he and Republicans have sought to unwind former President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act. Trump was thwarted during his first term in trying to repeal and replace the law.
When he ran for president in 2024, Trump said he had only “concepts of a plan” to address health care. His new proposal, short on many specifics, appeared to be the concepts of a plan.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, described it to reporters on a telephone briefing as a “framework that we believe will help Congress create legislation.”
A White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly and described some details on condition of anonymity said the administration had been discussing the proposal with allies in Congress, but was unable to name any lawmakers who were working to address the plan.
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the Republican chair of the Senate health committee, said in a social media post praising Trump's plan that his committee “has and will take action on the President's affordability agenda.”
The White House did not offer any details about how much money it envisioned being sent to consumers to shop for insurance, or whether the money would be available to all “Obamacare” enrollees or just those with lower-tier bronze and catastrophic plans.
The idea mirrors one floated among Republican senators last year. Democrats largely rejected it, saying the accounts would not be enough to cover costs for most consumers. Currently, such accounts are used disproportionately by the wealthiest Americans, who have more income to fund them and a bigger incentive to lower their tax rate.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked Thursday whether the president could guarantee that under his plan, people would be able to cover their health costs. She did not directly answer, but said, “If this plan is put in place, every single American who has health care in the United States will see lower costs as a result.”
Enhanced tax credits that helped reduce the cost of insurance for the vast majority of Affordable Care Act enrollees expired at the end of 2025 even though Democrats had forced a 43-day government shutdown over the issue.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, has been leading a bipartisan group of 12 senators trying to devise a compromise that would extend those subsidies for two years while adding new limits on who can receive them. That proposal would create the option, in the second year, of a health savings account that Trump and Republicans prefer.
The White House official denied that Trump was closing the door completely on those bipartisan negotiations, and said the White House preferred to send money directly to consumers.
Trump’s plan comes months after the Republicans’ big tax and spending bill last year cut more than $1 trillion over a decade in federal health care and food assistance, largely by imposing work requirements on those receiving aid and shifting certain federal costs to the states.
Democrats have blasted those cuts as devastating for vulnerable people who rely on programs such as Medicaid for their health care. The GOP bill included an infusion of $50 billion over five years for rural health programs, an amount experts have said is inadequate to fill the gap in funding.
The White House said Trump's new proposal will seek to bring down premiums by fully funding cost-sharing reductions, or CSRs, a type of financial help that insurers give to low-income ACA enrollees on silver-level, or mid-tier plans.
From 2014 until 2017, the federal government reimbursed insurance companies for CSRs. In 2017, the first Trump administration stopped making those payments. To make up for the lost money, insurance companies raised premiums for silver-level plans. That ended up increasing the financial assistance many enrollees got to help them pay for premiums.
As a result, health analysts say that while restoring money for CSRs would likely bring down silver-level premiums, as Trump says, it could have the unwelcome ripple effect of increasing many people’s net premiums on bronze and gold plans.
Oz said Trump's plans also seeks to have certain medications made available over the counter instead of by prescription if they are deemed safe enough. He mentioned higher-dose nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and peptic ulcer drugs as two examples.
It was unclear whether the White House is asking Congress to take steps to make more prescription drugs available over the counter. For decades, the Food and Drug Administration has had the ability to do that.
The heartburn drug Prilosec, as well as numerous allergy medications, are among those the FDA has approved for over-the-counter sales. The FDA only approves such changes if studies show patients can safely take the drug after reading the package labeling. Companies must apply for the switch.
The White House said Trump’s plan would also codify his efforts to lower drug prices by tying prices to the lowest price paid by other countries.
Trump has already struck deals with a number of drugmakers to get them to lower the prices. As part of that, the drugmakers have agreed to sell pharmacy-ready medicines directly to consumers who can shop online at the White House's website for selling drugs directly to consumers, TrumpRx.gov.
TrumpRx did not yet have any drugs listed on Thursday. Oz said drugs will be available on the website at the end of the month.
AP Health Writer Matthew Perrone contributed to this report.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump speaks at the Detroit Economic Club, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026 in Detroit. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
