"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.
NEW YORK (AP) — Google said Sunday that it is expanding the shopping features in its AI chatbot by teaming up with Walmart, Shopify, Wayfair and other big retailers to turn the Gemini app into a virtual merchant as well as an assistant.
An instant checkout function will allow customers to make purchases from some businesses and through a range of payment providers without leaving the Gemini chat they used to find products, according to Walmart and Google.
The news was announced on the first day of the National Retail Federation’s annual convention in New York, which is expected to draw 40,000 attendees from retail and technology companies this week. The role of artificial intelligence in e-commerce and its impact on consumer behavior are expected to dominate the three-day event.
“The transition from traditional web or app search to agent-led commerce represents the next great evolution in retail," John Furner, Walmart's incoming president and CEO, said in a joint statement with Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichaei.
Google’s new AI shopping feature works this way: if a customer asks what gear to get for a winter ski trip, for example, Gemini will return items from a participating retailers’ inventory.
In the case of Walmart, customers who link their Walmart and Google accounts will receive recommendations based on their past purchases, and any products they decide to buy via the chatbot could get combined with their existing Walmart or Sam's Club online shopping carts, according to the statement.
OpenAI and Walmart announced a similar deal in October, saying the partnership would allow ChatGPT members to use an instant checkout feature to shop for nearly everything available on Walmart’s website except for fresh food.
Google, OpenAI and Amazon all are racing to create tools that would allow for seamless AI-powered shopping by taking chatbot users from browsing to buying within the same program instead of having to go to a retailer’s website to complete a purchase. The race between OpenAI and Google has heated up in recent months.
Before the recent holiday shopping season, OpenAI launched an instant checkout feature within ChatGPT that allows users to buy products from select retailers and Etsy sellers without leaving the app.
San Francisco software company Salesforce estimated that AI influenced $272 billion, or 20%, of all global retail sales, in one way or another during the holiday shopping season.
Google said the AI-assisted shopping features in Gemini only would be available to U.S. users initially but that it planned to expand internationally in the coming months. Shoppers initially only can make payments through the cards linked to their Google accounts but soon will be able to make purchases using PayPal, the company said.
The aim of deploying chatbots in e-commerce is to make it easier for people to find what they’re looking for. Instead of entering search terms and keywords, they can type or use voice dictation, and refine their searches through a conversational back-and-forth. Tech companies also are rolling out “AI agents” that are a step beyond today's generative AI chatbots, though their ability to buy products on behalf of consumers is still limited.
“I’m under no false belief that there’s going to be a snap of the finger and then all of a sudden, agentic commerce is going to get everywhere," Mike Edmonds, PayPal's vice president of agentic commerce and commercial growth, said at Sunday's convention. But he cautioned retailers against taking a wait-and-see approach.
Shopify founder and CEO Tobi Lutke told a small group of reporters on Thursday that many people like the experience of “having a personal shopper who really gets them, understands them and can fit something in your budget," but Shopify also wants to make it doesn't “over automate."
“The person, the shopper, is in charge, and they can make the final call, but also we make it so that people find the perfect product for themselves,” he added.
Walmart's Furner said Sunday that the largest employer and retailer in the U.S. is trying to “close the gap between I want it and I have it” with the help of AI.
He and Pichaei announced from a stage at the National Retail Federation conference that Walmart plans to expand drone delivery service to 150 more stores in partnership with Wing, a division of Alphabet. The addition will bring Walmart's drone delivery locations with Wing to 270 by 2027, stretching from Los Angeles to Miami, the companies said.
FILE - Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at a Google I/O event in Mountain View, Calif., Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
