he Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its cyclosporiasis case count on September 1, 2026, to 18,445 laboratory-confirmed cases acquired in the United States between May 1 and August 31, with 990 hospitalizations and two deaths across forty-nine states and the District of Columbia. The same page, as posted August 24, said 17,180 cases, 922 hospitalizations and forty-eight states. The season is over on paper. The count is not.
The count rose 1,265 in eight days, and every one of those people was already sick before the calendar closed.
The table below sets CDC’s August 24 figures, which I wrote about on September 1, next to the September 1 figures. The season window did not move. The dates on the page still say May 1 through August 31. What moved is the number of people inside the window, because it takes about six weeks from the day someone gets sick to the day CDC receives the case, and the people whose onsets fell in August are only now arriving.
| Measure | August 24 figure | September 1 figure | Change |
| Laboratory-confirmed cases | 17,180 | 18,445 | +1,265 |
| Hospitalizations | 922 | 990 | +68 |
| Deaths | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| States reporting (plus DC) | 48 | 49 | +1 |
| Same period, 2025 | 1,180 | 1,180 | 0 |
Source: CDC Cyclospora Case Data page, figures as posted August 24 and September 1, 2026, downloaded September 3, 2026. Check: 17,180 plus 1,265 equals 18,445; 922 plus 68 equals 990; 48 plus 1 equals 49.
A 7.4 percent increase in confirmed cases in eight days, after the season officially ended, is not a rounding error. It is the reporting lag doing exactly what CDC says it does. The page lists the median onset as July 8 and the latest onset as August 22. Nine days of August onsets have not been entered at all yet, and the late-August cases will keep landing on this page into October. Anyone treating 18,445 as the final number of the 2026 season is reading the calendar, not the parasite.
Hawaii joined the map. Delaware is the only state left without a confirmed case.
The state count moved from forty-eight to forty-nine because Hawaii now reports at least one confirmed case, as Newsweek reported on September 2. That leaves Delaware as the single state with no confirmed domestically acquired case on CDC’s map, and Newsweek reports Delaware has thirteen probable cases waiting on sequencing. Delaware recorded its first cyclosporiasis case in July. Whether those thirteen end up counted as domestic or as travel is a question for the state laboratory, not a reason to think Delaware was spared.
Michigan remains the hardest-hit state, in CDC’s highest map category of 4,000 to 6,999 cases. Washington, where I live, stands at 76 cases as of the state Department of Health’s August 28 update, forty-seven of them in people who traveled to countries where the parasite is endemic, two hospitalized, and no recalled lettuce shipped here. Washington is monitoring the national outbreak, not experiencing it.
CDC knows of 35,441 cases in some form. It will defend 18,445 of them.
The confirmed number is not the whole page. CDC also reports 3,491 laboratory-confirmed cases that still require investigation to determine whether they were acquired in the United States or during travel, and says it is aware of at least 13,505 additional cases that are not laboratory confirmed or are pending patient interview and submission to CDC. Add the three figures and CDC is aware, in its own words, of 35,441 cyclosporiasis cases since May 1: 18,445 plus 3,491 plus 13,505.
That total is worth stopping on. On September 1 I added up what the states themselves were publishing and got 32,857 across forty-one reporting states, with nine states publishing nothing. CDC’s own aware-of figure is now higher than the sum of the state counts. The two numbers are built differently and neither is final, but they agree on the shape of the thing: the confirmed count is a floor, the true count is roughly double it, and the difference is people who were never sequenced, never interviewed, or never tested at all. CDC’s page says the true number of sick people is likely higher than the number reported. On this page, CDC is the one saying it.
The lettuce outbreak is frozen at 11,458 because nobody has updated its page since August 27.
The multistate outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico still reads 11,458 illnesses, 495 hospitalizations and two deaths in twenty states on CDC’s investigation page, with onsets from June 14 through August 15. FDA’s advisory carries the same numbers and the same August 27 stamp. Neither agency has posted since. The national count moved on September 1; the outbreak count did not.
Subtracting the outbreak from the season gives 6,987 confirmed domestic cases that are not in the lettuce outbreak: 18,445 minus 11,458. That number is soft, because the two figures carry different dates and the outbreak page will catch up. It is still 5.9 times the 1,180 cases CDC counted for the entire 2025 season. The lettuce explains most of 2026. It does not explain all of it, and the six other open Cyclospora files on FDA’s table with no food named are where the rest of the answer is sitting.
Last year’s season closed with 1,180 cases. This year’s closed with 15.6 times that, and hospitalizations run one in nineteen.
CDC keeps the 2025 comparison on the page for a reason: 1,180 cases between May 1 and August 31, 2025, against 18,445 for the same dates in 2026. That is 15.6 times last year, and the multiple will rise as the lag clears. The hospitalization figure is its own story. Nine hundred ninety admissions among 18,445 confirmed cases is 5.4 percent, roughly one in nineteen, for an illness that most people still describe as a bad case of diarrhea. Two people died. Ninety-seven percent of the people in the lettuce outbreak got sick before the recall, and nothing done in a home kitchen would have stopped it, which is the point I made on September 1 when Food Safety Education Month opened the day after the worst cyclosporiasis season on record officially closed.
I have been suing lettuce companies for nearly thirty years. The number that matters to me on this page is not 18,445. It is the gap between 18,445 and 35,441, because every person in that gap is someone who was sick enough to be counted somewhere and not sick enough, or not lucky enough, to be sequenced. Those are the people who never get a call from an epidemiologist and never learn what made them sick.
The next update will be larger, and the one after that will be larger still.
CDC has not said when it will stop updating the page. It should keep updating until the lag clears, which on its own six-week estimate means the middle of October for the last August onsets. Three states had already stopped publishing before the season ended. The federal page is now the only place where the whole season can be read in one number, and that number has grown every week it has been posted. Anyone reporting a final 2026 count today is early by at least six weeks.
Three questions people are asking.
Is the Cyclospora outbreak over? The reporting season CDC defines ended August 31, and the recalled lettuce is past its best-by dates and off the shelves. The case count is still rising because of the reporting lag, and CDC updated it on September 1 to 18,445 confirmed cases. New illnesses from the recalled lettuce are unlikely; new reports of old illnesses are certain.
How many people have been hospitalized? CDC reports 990 hospitalizations and two deaths among the 18,445 confirmed cases as of September 1, 2026. The lettuce outbreak alone accounts for at least 495 hospitalizations and both deaths as of August 27.
Which states have Cyclospora cases? Forty-nine states and the District of Columbia. Hawaii was added with the September 1 update. Delaware is the only state with no confirmed domestically acquired case on CDC’s map, though it reports probable cases awaiting confirmation.