GOATS AND SODA – Antibiotics cannot cure COVID. They don’t help a bit. And yet, new data shows that, during the pandemic, COVID patients were given antibiotics – a lot of antibiotics.
That’s bad because the overuse of antibiotics can breed superbugs that are resistant to medications. The impact of this pandemic overuse has lingered even as the pandemic has faded.
So how did this unfortunate turn of events come to be? A series of new reports and papers shed light.
“Globally, about 75% of patients hospitalized with COVID were given antibiotics, despite only 8% having a bacterial coinfection where antibiotics would be medically useful.”
This comes from new data published in late April that was collected through the World Health Organization’s Global Clinical Platform in 65 countries between January 2020 and March 2023.
“It’s sobering to see these data,” says Dr. Helen Boucher, dean of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, who studies antimicrobial resistance and was not involved in the study.
WHO says the antibiotics were often used “just in case” they could help. Boucher says there are likely several factors playing into this.
First, early in the pandemic, clinicians didn’t know much about COVID and were nervous about secondary bacterial infections which can require antibiotics.
And second, the hospital personnel who usually were responsible for making sure that antibiotics are used appropriately were instead busy with new assignments to care for the onslaught of COVID patients.
The data vary around the world.
The region with the lowest antibiotic use during the pandemic – 33% – was the Western Pacific region, which stretches from Australia up to China. The highest use – 83% – was in the Eastern Mediterranean and parts of Africa …
