US outbreak of parasite causing ‘watery diarrhea’ rises to more than 2,800 cases | US healthcare
State health officials in Michigan and Ohio are reporting cases of cyclosporiasis, a parasitic infection that causes “watery diarrhea,” loss of appetite and weight loss.
The emergence of more than 2,800 cases comes a year after the Trump administration cut funding to state and local health departments and scaled back a program to coordinate information on foodborne illnesses, including cyclospora.
“It’s like putting a puzzle together,” said Barbara Kowalcyk, an associate professor at George Washington University’s Milken Institute of Public Health and director of the university’s Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security. “You start taking pieces out of your puzzle; it becomes harder to see the whole picture, and that’s what we did. We took out the pieces of the whole puzzle.”
In contrast, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported As of Friday, there were 843 confirmed cases and 1,500 suspected cases of cyclospora in 31 states. Eighty-six people were hospitalized, none died. . The CDC expects the number of federal cases to rise, in part because of typical delays in disease investigation.
Michigan appears to be particularly hard hit, health officials report 2,640 cases. Across the border, state officials in Ohio are reporting 177 cases. Health ministries did not identify the source of the epidemic.
The Michigan Health Department is urging restaurants and commercial kitchens in the southeast to thoroughly wash leafy greens, snow peas, some herbs and raspberries, or ideally, cook them.
Cyclospora has a two-week incubation period, and the CDC assumes a six-week reporting delay between the onset of the disease and receipt of the case report. It is difficult to investigate a disease with a long incubation period; To find potential links between cases (such as eating at the same restaurant or shopping at the same store), epidemiologists interview everyone with a laboratory-confirmed case. These bouts usually occur two to four weeks after infection, making it difficult for people to remember what they ate.
Michigan’s chief medical officer, Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, despite these difficulties Associated Press: “There is a clearly related epidemic going on right now.”
But in a time of funding cuts, Kowalcyk said typical delays are likely getting worse.
“Have the public health funding cuts impacted current activities related to the cyclospora outbreak? I think they have,” Kowalcyk said. “If you’re short-staffed, you might be having an interview. [patients] “In 6-8 weeks,” he said.
Kowalcyk said the delays were exacerbated in part by funding cuts from the Trump administration, noting grant cuts to both state and local health departments and changes in federal oversight systems that make it harder to see the “full picture.”
Trump administration cuts in March 2025 $11.4 billion grant To state and local health departments. Although these grants were earmarked for pandemic activities, Kowalcyk said they also increased the capacity of the local health department. Michigan public health laboratories He alone lost $5.5 million, according to Bridge Michigan, a local news source.
“There may be people at state and local health departments who are funded by three to four different funding sources,” Kowalcyk said. “If you cut someone, you have to put people on part time or reduce your staff. There aren’t a lot of options, which means your ability to scale up during a pandemic is limited.”
In July 2025, the Trump administration also narrowed the scope of a program called FoodNet, which actively monitors foodborne outbreaks. FoodNet’s remit ranged from eight foodborne pathogens, including cyclospora, to E coli and salmonella, which produce only shiga toxin.
FoodNet helped coordinate information across states and developed the oft-cited statistic that 48 million people living in the United States contract foodborne illnesses, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die each year.
“Despite what the current HHS administration believes, ignoring a problem does not make it go away,” public health and veterinary consultant Gail Hansen told the University of Minnesota. Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (Jidrap) in August 2025. “States do not have the ability to coordinate information and data across states, and this disruption will return us to a time before FoodNet.”
Management generally argued that the change in FoodNet’s scope reduced duplicative efforts and said foodborne pathogen research was not affected by the change.
“The narrowing of FoodNet’s reporting requirements is due in part to the changing oversight landscape since the collaboration began in 1995,” he said. CDC website Updated in April. “Today, other surveillance systems monitor infection caused by FoodNet pathogens.”
A person who notified the Guardian reached out to HHS for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
