Journal Article

Antibiotics Use in Primary Care during COVID-19

Llor, Carl

2022

Overview

In turn, the primary care system experienced massive setbacks from the pandemic, with significant reductions in visit volume as patients stopped seeking in-person care, important organizational challenges with more phone consultations and many countries adopted digital-first strategies, remote monitoring and telehealth platforms to enable healthcare provision without physical interactions [1]. [3] found that the threshold for prescribing antibiotics for respiratory tract infections among English primary care doctors decreased during the first few months of the pandemic, caused by the change to remote consultations and the high uncertainty about the role of antibiotics for this infection that was present at the beginning of the pandemic, resembling the high usage of antibiotics given in the hospital setting for treating community-acquired pneumonia. [...]with the use of a large Catalonian primary care database which included all the suspected and confirmed COVID-19 infections during the first four months of the pandemic, a composite severity endpoint, comprising pneumonia, hospital admission and death due to COVID-19, was found to be more frequent among individuals who has previously consumed antibiotics compared to those who did not.

• Publisher: MDPI AG,MDPI
• Subject: Antibiotics / Bacterial infections / Coronaviruses / COVID-19 / Dentists / Health care / Infections / Medical research / n/a / Pandemics / Pediatrics / Physicians / Pneumonia / Primary care / Remote monitoring / Respiratory tract / Respiratory tract diseases / Viral infections