Antimicrobial prescribing and clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19 infection: Experience of a single center in an upper middle-income country

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to describe antimicrobial prescribing patterns in hospitalized adult patients with confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 infection, and to determine the relationship between antimicrobial agent used and non-survival amongst the studied COVID-19 patients. METHODS: This is an observational, retrospective study. Specialty Clinic Hospital in Jordan is selected as the study setting for this conducted study. The study comprised of all hospitalized adult patients with confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 infection who were admitted to the hospital between October 2020 and December 2020. FINDINGS: A total of 216 hospitalized patients with confirmed COVID-19 were included in the analysis. The majority of patients were prescribed antibiotic agents (n=149, 69.0%). Almost half of the patients have been prescribed antivirals agent (n=111, 51.4%). Survivals were significantly more likely to have been prescribed third generation cephalosporin (19.8% vs 3.4%, p=0.02). Non-survivals were significantly more likely to be older in age (mean age: 70.5 vs 62.7 years, p=0.009), have higher mean Charleston Comorbidity Index Score (3.7 vs 2.7, p=0.01), have at least one comorbidity (93.1% vs 71.1%, p=0.008), had shortness of breath at admission (72.4% vs 50.8%, p=0.023) and were admitted to the ICU during current admission (96.6% vs 18.7%, p<0.001) compared to survivors. Non-survivals were significantly more likely to had increased levels of WBC count (41.4% vs 19.7%; p=0.034), increased neutrophiles count (72.4% vs 39.4%; p=0.004) and higher mean C-reactive protein (167.2 vs 103.6; p=0.001) at admission. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study demonstrated factors are associated with the non-survival, and additionally benchmarked the mortality rate, amongst the studied COVID 19 patients.