A study found that antibiotic prescriptions for non-respiratory ailments were unchanged by COVID lockdown in Australia, which had comparatively few COVID cases.
In regions with high levels of COVID transmission, such as Europe and the United States, prescriptions for antibiotics in the community fell dramatically after COVID restrictions were introduced in early 2020. A study published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology looked at antibiotic prescribing in Australia, which has so far had low COVID rates.
Analysing national claims data, researchers observed that COVID restrictions in Australia were associated with substantial reductions in community dispensing of antibiotics primarily used to treat respiratory infections, but found that antibiotics for non-respiratory infections did not change.
“The issue is that antibiotics should rarely be prescribed for common viral respiratory infections in the first place. These big reductions show how low general practitioners’ antibiotic prescribing could go if guidelines were followed more closely,” said co–senior Helga Zoega, PhD, of UNSW Sydney, in Australia.
Source: Wiley
