➡️ “As health-care systems around the world fight to contain COVID-19, they may be inadvertently opening the door wider to another killer that is just as dangerous:” antibiotic resistant superbugs such as Clostridium difficile, or C. diff.
➡️ Data show that antibiotics are being rampantly overused during the pandemic.
“The increase in unnecessary use of antibiotics during COVID-19 is not a theoretical concern: A study published last August in Clinical Infectious Diseases found that of some 1,700 hospital patients in Michigan, more than half on average received early antibiotic treatment. Yet only 3.5% arrived at the hospital with bacterial infections.”
In May, a review of studies from the US and Asia reported that 72% of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 (1,450 of 2,010) were given antimicrobials. In the papers where researchers reported whether or not patients actually had other infections, only 8% (62 of 806) of people with COVID-19 were also diagnosed with bacterial or fungal infections.”
➡️ “As a recent editorial in the Journal of Hospital Infection put it, antibiotic stewardship “has become a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic.” This cannot continue.”
Wider than the Sky 