NCEZID: Responding To Outbreaks

Perhaps what NCEZID is best known for is responding to outbreaks of infectious disease. Here are a few large-scale responses that NCEZID has led since 2010:

• First outbreak of Zika virus in the Western Hemisphere, which was linked to birth defects
• Largest Ebola epidemic in history, which killed more than 11,000 people
• Fungal meningitis outbreak caused by contaminated steroid injections
• Second largest outbreak of West Nile virus infections that sickened 5,600 people in the US
• Outbreak of cholera in Haiti, which killed at least 10,000 people

What we’re doing

NCEZID provides rapid assistance to states and foreign ministries of health through formal requests called epidemic-assistance investigations, or Epi-Aids. Each year, NCEZID conducts almost half (~25) of all CDC’s Epi-Aid investigations of outbreaks—large and small, domestic and international. Recent examples of Epi-Aids and other outbreak investigations that NCEZID participated in include:

• E. coli (Escherichia coli) infections among children who visited a goat farm in Connecticut
• Emerging, drug-resistant fungal infections (Candida auris) that spread among patients in healthcare settings
• Rarely seen bloodstream infections (Elizabethkingia) in patients in Wisconsin
• Illness caused by E. coli-tainted flour that infected people in more than 20 states
• Listeria bacteria in packaged salads that hospitalized 19 people, killing 1