A health professional works in the intensive care unit ward, where patients infected with the COVID-19 are being treated, at the Santa Casa hospital in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, on June 1. Douglas Magno/AFP/Getty ImageThe World Health Organization has raised alarm about the risk of using antibiotics to treat Covid-19, fueling a rise in antimicrobial resistance around the world.
Antimicrobial resistance occurs when microorganisms such as bacteria or viruses evolve in a way that makes them no longer affected by antibiotics or other medicines — leading to infections that can no longer be treated with the medications commonly used today.
The overuse of antibiotics, or using them unnecessarily, can lead to harmful antimicrobial resistance.
WHO noted in a news release on Monday that new global data shows that bacterial infections across nations already are increasingly resistant to the medications used to the treat them — and warned that the use of antibiotics during the coronavirus pandemic could drive this trend even more.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has led to an increased use of antibiotics, which ultimately will lead to higher bacterial resistance rates that will impact the burden of disease and deaths during the pandemic and beyond,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a media briefing in Geneva on Monday.
WHO last week released clinical guidance for doctors not to use antibiotic therapy or prophylaxis among patients with mild or moderate Covid-19 unless there is a clear clinical indication to do so.
“In the current Clinical Management of COVID-19, Interim Guidance, WHO has outlined the appropriate use of antibiotic therapy for medical professionals to treat patients. Therefore, both tackling antimicrobial resistance, while also saving lives,” Tedros said.
Tedros added that a “record number” of countries are continuing to monitor and report cases of antimicrobial resistance, and “as we gather more evidence, it’s clear that the world is losing its ability to use critically important antimicrobial medicines all over the world.”
Additionally, using antibiotics appropriately can become a complex balancing act.
“On the demand side, in some countries there is an overuse of antibiotics and antimicrobial agents in both humans and animals. However, in many low- and middle-income countries these lifesaving medicines are out of reach for those that need them, leading to needless suffering and death,” Tedros said.
“On the supply side, there is essentially very little market incentive to developing new antibiotics and antimicrobial agents, which has led to multiple market failures of very promising tools in the past few years,” Tedros said. “As well as finding new models to incentivize sustainable innovation, as seen with the Covid-19 Solidarity Trial, we must find ways to accelerate viable candidates.”
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