Unfortunately, COVID-19 pandemic has drawn the attention and resources away from this bludgeoning issue of AMR, overshadowing this badly and making it worse.
AMR caused more than 29,400 deaths only in the first year of the pandemic with nearly 40% of the people getting it while they were in hospital.
Per the CDCs report on “COVID-19: U.S. Impact on Antimicrobial Resistance, Special Report 2022” digging into the impact of COVID-19 on Healthcare Facilities and Community Settings, there were five major actions (Tracking and Data, Preventing Infections, Antibiotic/Anti-fungal Use, Environment and Sanitation, and the Vaccines, Therapeutics, and Diagnostics) required to combat antimicrobial resistance that were negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than ever, these findings strongly reiterate the importance of cutting down the unintended and unnecessary use of antibiotics by using cutting-edge diagnostic tests like Acutis Reveal™ to promptly identify the causative agents at source and reduce the turnaround times for confirming the pathogens as well as their antibiotic susceptibility profiles, to effectively curb down the worsening problem of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR).