Why should we be concerned about use of antibiotics and COVID-19?
What happens when we use antibiotics that are not prescribed
or don't use them in the prescribed way?
Hello and welcome to Science in 5. I'm Vismita Gupta-Smith.
We are talking to Dr Hanan Balkhy today.
Welcome, Hanan.
Hanan, tell us about why we are concerned
about antibiotics and COVID-19?
Thank you Vismita and it's nice to be with you again.
Antibiotics are pharmaceutical agents.
They are medications that are useful in treating bacterial infections
and not viral infections.
And COVID-19, or SARS-CoV-2, is a viral infection
that can cause mild disease where patients remain at home
in the communities, or it can lead to moderate or severe disease
where patients are admitted to the hospital.
Some of them might even be admitted to the intensive care units.
But the problem is that with the large number of COVID-19 patients,
the use of antibiotics by health care providers becomes more
and more and more so there's excessive use of antibiotics when not needed.
The bottom line is that antibiotics treat bacteria and not viruses,
and SARS-CoV-2, or COVID-19, is a disease caused by a virus.
So there is really no recommendation for treating
antibiotics for COVID-19 as a pathogen or as a disease.
So Hanan explained to us the scenarios where antibiotics are prescribed
during the course of COVID-19 treatment.
A great question Vismita.
So when patients are admitted to the hospital and
they start having more complexity from their disease
so they can have what is known as a super infection with a bacteria,
or if they're in the intensive care unit and they're also
susceptible to having an overlying bacterial infection
on top of the viral infection caused by SARS-CoV-2.
And the WHO did come out with recommendations on when to use
antibiotics within the course of SARS-CoV-2 patients,
and those are usually within the moderate to severe disease
classification of this illness.
Hanan explained to us why we are concerned about scenarios
where people may be taking antibiotics without a prescription
or may not be completing the course, or may be taking antibiotics
that has been prescribed for someone else
because they heard that this was effective for someone else
with similar symptoms.
Explain to us why this is a matter of concern for us.
This is a great matter of concern because first of all,
there's several things happening in the scenarios you gave.
People feel the urge to use antibiotics because they heard
from family or friend that it would be useful to them.
While antibiotics need to be prescribed by licensed
health care providers to provide it for the right diagnosis,
with the right dosages, with the right duration,
and this is extremely important.
So that's the first issue.
The second issue is in giving them this and using them irrationally,
we're already allowing for these bacteria to become
more and more resistant.
We are already at the era, what we call the post-antibiotic era
where some of our most common and powerful
antibiotics are no longer effective and this type
of behaviour continues to fuel into the increasing resistance
among the bacteria.
So we really need to make the communities and people aware
of what is the proper use of antibiotics and that they need
to be given through a prescription and that they need
to be taken seriously.
And if they are given a prescription,
they really need to complete the course of treatment.
This improper use or irrational use of antibiotics, as I said,
only fuels further into resistance development for these bacteria.
Thank you, Hanan.
That was Science in 5 today.
Until next time then,
stay safe, stay healthy and stick with science.