Increase in Antimicrobial-Resistant Infections Linked to Pandemic

Although protecting hospital patients from antibiotic-resistant infections is always a concern for health care facility workers, it became even more crucial during the pandemic. An analysis of adults admitted to 271 hospitals across the U.S. both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic found that those hospitalized during the pandemic had higher rates of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections compared to those hospitalized before the pandemic, according to study results announced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The new study, which was presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases in Portugal this week, found higher rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in patients admitted for COVID-19, as well as for other illnesses and injuries. It also found that AMR was significantly higher in health care-acquired infections (HAIs) during the pandemic.

An estimated 1.2 million people worldwide died in 2019 from antibiotic-resistant infections. Health experts predict this number will increase ten-fold by 2050.

Previous studies have linked AMR to the pandemic, possibly due to the increase in the use of antibiotics to treat COVID-19 patients and disruptions to infection prevention and control practices in overwhelmed health care facilities. Researchers in the new study sought to find additional evidence of this trend.

Investigators compared 1,789,458 patients who were hospitalized from July 1, 2019 to February 29, 2020 with 3,729,208 patients hospitalized from March 1, 2020 to October 30, 2021. The number of patients admitted to the hospital with at least one AMR infection was 63,263 in the pre-pandemic period and 129, 410 during the pandemic.

The analyses found that the AMR rate was 3.54 per 100 admissions before the pandemic and 3.47 per 100 admissions during the pandemic. However, patients who tested positive or negative for COVID-19 had higher levels of AMR (4.92 per 100 admissions) than patients before the pandemic (4.11 per 100 admissions).

Despite these findings, the study authors believe that additional evaluation of the pandemic’s impact on antimicrobial resistance is needed.​ “As health care capacity remains at the forefront of everyone’s mind, it will be critically important to keep a pulse on the growing impact of drug-resistant infections,” said Dr. Vikas Gupta, of the medical technology company Becton Dickinson. “This type of data and surveillance will help health care leaders identify needed resources to support antimicrobial stewardship programs—and also support more detailed and sophisticated forecasting of future trends and outbreaks.”