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Antibiotic consumption summary

Doctor Nina Zhu discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on other infectious diseases, antimicrobial use, and AMR.

Dr Nina Zhu of Imperial College London provides their understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the incidence of other infectious diseases, antimicrobial use, and AMR.

The impact of COVID-19 is complex, nuanced, and context specific; the impact on critical care differs to the impact on community medicine and the impact in low resource settings is different to that in high resource settings.

To fully understand the impact of COVID-19, we must consider the following key factors:

Bacterial and fungal co-infections in COVID-19 patients, as well as the occurrence of secondary infections. The impact of the pandemic response of the epidemiology of other infectious diseases. Which patients attended healthcare and how healthcare was provided during the pandemic, including the limitations of remote diagnostics. The impact of the pandemic on infection and AMR surveillance activities.

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If you require a screen-reader-compatible version of this table, this is available as a PDF here

Dr Zhu also discusses the key learnings that can be taken from the pandemic for future surveillance, including the standardisation of reports, approaches to the ongoing challenge of antibiotic surveillance in the community setting, and changes to healthcare practice during the pandemic.

All papers mentioned in Dr Zhu’s talk are available below should you wish to engage further with the material discussed.


When you are ready, please click ‘next’ to continue the course and we will explore the impact of COVID-19 on AMS.

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Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance: A Social Science Approach

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