Impact of an Antimicrobial Stewardship Intervention on Usage of Antibiotics in Coronavirus Disease-2019 at a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital in India

BACKGROUND: There was evidence that antibiotic usage increased in hospitalized COVID-19 patients during the early days of the pandemic. OBJECTIVE: We assessed the impact of stewardship interventions on antibiotic usage in these patients. METHODS: We designed a quasi-experimental study using an interrupted time series. Patients were stratified according to the severity category of the illness – mild and moderate-to-severe (O2 saturation ≥94% and <93% respectively). Baseline antibiotic usage data was collected in the pre-intervention phase. Intervention was given in the form of focus group discussion (FGD) and followed up with feedback-audit during the post-intervention phase. Primary outcome was the change in days of therapy (DOT) per 1000 patient-days. RESULTS: 361 adult patients were recruited in both phases during July to December, 2020. In the post-intervention phase, DOT per 1000 patient-days reduced from 589 to 523 (P=0.013) and from 843 to 585 (P <0.0001) in mild and moderate-to-severe categories, respectively. De-escalations at 48 hours increased significantly from 21% to 41% (P=0.0079) and from 31% to 62% (P=0.0006), respectively. No difference in mortality was observed. CONCLUSION: We found high usage of empirical antibiotics in adult patients hospitalized with COVID-19. FGD and feedback audits can successfully reduce antibiotic overuse in these patients.