The FDA has added a new cyclospora outbreak of at least 72 cases to its active investigations table. The July 22 listing marks the agency’s fifth active cyclospora investigation of the season.
The new cluster comes amid what’s now the largest cyclosporiasis outbreak on record nationally. CDC reported 4,940 lab-confirmed cases and 341 hospitalizations across 41 states as of a July 21 update, with 4,173 of those cases acquired domestically — already surpassing the 3,955 cases recorded in all of 2025.
Here are four things to know.
- The FDA initiated a traceback for the new 72-case cluster, meaning investigators are working backward through supply-chain records from where sick people ate or shopped to try to identify a common grower or supplier. The agency has not yet linked the cluster to any specific food, restaurant or region, and has not started on-site inspections or product sampling.
- Whether the new cluster connects to the larger, ongoing Midwest outbreak is unclear. That outbreak — centered in Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana and Kentucky — was initially linked to iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell and traced to Taylor Farms, but the FDA has since retracted the lab result tying the outbreak to the supplier as a false positive.
- Michigan and Ohio remain hardest hit in the broader lettuce-linked outbreak, with Michigan reporting 6,571 cases and 102 hospitalizations and Ohio logging 1,246 confirmed cases as of mid-July. CDC said it’s aware of more than 7,400 additional cases not yet lab-confirmed, concentrated mostly in those two states, and expects counts to keep climbing given a typical six-week reporting lag between illness onset and case reporting.
- The CDC classifies cyclosporiasis as nationally notifiable in 47 states, plus New York City and Washington, D.C., meaning health providers there are required to report cases. So far this season, nine states haven’t logged a single case with CDC: Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota and Vermont.
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