Trends of drug resistance to the commonly used antibiotics to combat the COVID-19 pandemic: Experience from a super-speciality institute of Northern India

PURPOSE: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is purely a viral illness which is not affected by the usage of antibiotics, but the risk of development of secondary bacterial infections during the course of respiratory illness or hospitalisation has led to a surge of antibiotic use. Anti-microbial resistance has taken an upward trend to some of the commonly used or over-used antibiotics. The present study was planned to focus on the trends of resistance rates noticed for the common antibiotics, namely, doxycycline, azithromycin, and so on, before and after the advent of this pandemic. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital of North India with 2000 samples, 1000 samples between March 2019 and March 2020 before the COVID pandemic and 1000 samples between April 2020 and April 2021 after the advent of the pandemic. Identification and zones for doxycycline and erythromycin were interpreted as per Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute guidelines. RESULTS: Among the various samples, pus/aspirated fluids were in majority (47%), followed by blood (29%), respiratory specimens (18%), and urine (6%). On stratifying the various pathogens associated with the treatment of doxycycline and erythromycin, Staphylococcus species were the predominant ones in almost 82% of the cases, followed by Enterococcus (12%) and Streptococcus (6%) species. For doxycycline, the overall sensitivity was noted to be 46% in the year 2019–20 and 31% in the year 2020–21, whereas for erythromycin, the sensitivity was seen as 39% in 2019–20 and dropped down to 26% in 2020–21. CONCLUSIONS: The authors noted a dip in the overall sensitivity towards doxycycline and azithromycin. This finding clearly indicates the increasing rates of antibiotic resistance in a developing country such as India during these COVID times. A proper anti-microbial stewardship programme during these times will help to de-escalate the increasing resistance rates and will prove to be of great help to the primary care physicians.