The seemingly uncontrollable rise of the number of COVID-19 cases is not the only problem the whole world is facing. A threat lurking behind the disease is a surge in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a concern serious enough that it made the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) decide that a group of medical centers must be assembled to study "secondary" bacterial infections in coronavirus-positive patients and the antibiotics being used to prevent them.
While antibiotics do not directly affect the coronavirus, viral respiratory infections often lead to bacterial pneumonia, thus the use of antibiotic treatment. However, doctors can struggle to determine which pathogen is causing a patient's lung problems. Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria change in response to the use of these medicines. Bacteria, not humans or animals, become antibiotic-resistant.
It is unfortunate, but hospitals are often hotbeds of antimicrobial resistance. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requires medical facilities to disclose all info regarding antibiotic use and the rate of infections acquired in the facility, but in the wake of the pandemic, compliance has fallen off.
On the other hand, some researchers argue that the pandemic will be able to curb the spread of both antibiotic resistance and bacteria within hospitals. Surgeries, which account for many hospital-acquired infections, have been largely canceled after all to make way for COVID-19 patients. Moreover, healthcare workers are required to wear masks, robes, and other personal protective equipment (PPE).
The problem, however, is that hospitals are being forced to reuse PPE and share ventilators between patients due to the lack of supply. "It's quite clear that COVID is transmitting in hospitals and if it is, [resistant bacteria are] too," Bo Shopsin, an infectious disease physician at New York University's Langone Health Center who is involved in DOD's planned study said.
But antibiotics are in many ways necessary, considering many coronavirus-positive patients die of secondary infections rather than of the virus itself. According to a paper published in The Lancelet, 15% of the 247 COVID-19 patients in Wuhan, China, and half of those who died acquired bacterial infections.
The DOD study will determine how widely antibiotics are being administered in COVID-19 patients, as well as how often secondary infections happen that warrant antibiotic use. The experimental findings will pave the way for more appropriate and accurate guidelines to be implemented regarding the use of antibiotics. It will also help researchers better understand why viral and bacterial infections are linked and how infections spread in hospitals.
