The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned of an increase in the number of deaths in the corona crisis due to the excessive use of antibiotics.
- The Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus triggers the lung disease Covid-19.
- Symptoms and course of diseases are very different.
- The WHO now warns of antibiotics in viral infections.
Geneva - The surge in antibiotic delivery will lead to increasing bacterial resistance to these agents, WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an online press conference on Monday. This would increase the number of illnesses and deaths from bacterial infections during and after the pandemic.
As a record number of countries are now monitoring & reporting on #antibioticresistance, new data reveals that a worrying number of bacterial infections are increasingly resistant to the medicines at hand to treat them.
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According to the WHO, only a small proportion of patients with the new coronavirus-induced lung disease Covid-19 need antibiotics to treat accompanying bacterial infections of the disease. In a guide for doctors, the UN sub-organization recommends that antibiotics should not be administered to Covid-19 patients with a mild course of the disease unless there is a specific suspicion of bacterial infection.
AFP