Infection control


War on drugs


ver the past year, the world has been gripped by a pandemic the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the H1N1 outbreak of 1918–19. At the time of writing, SARS-CoV-2 has infected more than 130 million people worldwide and caused close to three million deaths. Although tragic, Covid-19 mortality rates pale in comparison with that 1918 influenza virus, which killed 24–39 million people.


O Practical Patient Care / www.practical-patient-care.com


resistance


When a novel pandemic fi lls hospitals and stretches resources to breaking point, it’s hard to avoid overusing antibiotics – even if doing so might create even bigger problems for tomorrow. Allie Anderson speaks to Gemma Buckland-Merrett, the science and research lead of the drug-resistant infections priority programme at the Wellcome Trust, to fi nd out how the pandemic has impacted antimicrobial resistance, and asks Jeremy Barr, senior lecturer at the school of biological sciences at Melbourne’s Monash University, whether the answer might be to turn viruses on the bacteria.


However, it’s now thought that the majority of its victims in fact fell prey to secondary bacterial infections, most notably pneumonia. Fast forward 100 years, and advancements in medicine and technology have enabled us to prevent countless more deaths during this pandemic, thanks largely to speedily developed vaccines that can protect the most vulnerable patients from Covid-19’s deadliest effects.


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