On October 25th, the World Health Organization launched its list of 19 fungal pathogens posing a threat to human health with a warning that some strains are increasingly drug-resistant. The U.N. body, which has similar lists for viruses and bacteria, stated that fungal infections and their increasing resistance to treatment are a growing risk. However, the historic lack of focus on the threats of fungi means that there is a huge gap in knowledge, surveillance, treatments, and diagnostics.

Dr. Hanan Balkhy, Assistant Director-General for Antimicrobial Resistance, stated that emerging from the shadows of the bacterial antimicrobial resistance pandemic, fungal infections are growing and are even more resistant to treatments. She added that fungal infections mostly infect people who are already severely ill, such as cancer or tuberculosis patients, but the rates jumped among hospitalized COVID-19 patients during the pandemic.

The list divided the pathogens into three categories based on their potential impact and data on their resistance risk, i.e., critical, high, and medium priority. The critical group included Candida auris, Cryptococcus neoformans, Aspergillus fumigatus, and Candida albicans.

In the high group priority group, several fungi from the Candida family as well as the Mucorales family were included. Mucorales is a group of fungi that caused mucormycosis, or "black fungus" infection among seriously ill people during COVID-19 in India.

The medium group listed several other fungi, including Coccidioides spp. and Cryptococcus gattii. 

(Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/fungal-infection-list-launched-by-who-flags-global-health-threat-2022-10-25/ )