WHY ARE ANTIBIOTICS HARMFUL FOR TREATING MAJORITY OF COVID-19 CASES?

Inappropriate usage

Increased antibiotics use in combating the Covid-19 pandemic will strengthen bacterial resistance and ultimately lead to more deaths during the crisis and beyond, the World Health Organisation has warned. A worrying number of bacterial infections were becoming increasingly resistant to the medicines traditionally used to treat them, WHO directorgeneral Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

Higher bacterial resistance

The UN health agency said it was concerned that the inappropriate use of antibiotics would further fuel the trend. “The Covid-19 pandemic has led to an increased use of antibiotics, which will lead to higher bacterial resistance rates that will impact the burden of disease and deaths during the pandemic and beyond,” Tedros told a virtual press conference from Geneva.

Not everyone needs it

Virologists say only a small proportion of Covid-19 patients needed antibiotics to treat subsequent bacterial infections. WHO has issued guidance to medics not to provide antibiotic therapy or prophylaxis to patients with mild Covid-19, or to patients with moderate illness, without a clinical suspicion of bacterial infection.

Doctors need clinical diagnosis

In Michigan, Dr Valerie Vaughn, a hospitalist at Michigan Medicine, found that only 4 per cent of patients admitted to the hospital had a bacterial coinfection. Most patients were nonetheless given antibiotics. “What the pandemic has shown us is that even when doctors know patients have a viral infection, they are still providing antibiotics,” she said.

Industry needs oversight

Vaughn said she hopes the current health crisis will make it harder for political leaders and policymakers to ignore the need to fix the broken market for new antibiotics. “We’ve been moving slower than we should,” she said, “but hopefully the pandemic will light a fire under people and get them to move faster.”