The pandemic has caused us to make a major step backwards in controlling the spread of drug-resistant infections. Many of these drug-resistant infections have benefited from the pandemic.
COVID-19 directly killed over a million Americans, but has indirectly caused many more deaths. A look at all-cause mortality since early 2020 demonstrates that COVID is only part of the story. In fact, an estimated 30,000 people died from drug-resistant infections in 2020 alone. This represents a 15% increase from the year before.
About 40% of these 30,000 deaths were hospital patients. Much of this increase can be ascribed to the chaos of the early months of the pandemic. Antibiotics were mistakenly administered to patients with viral infections, and many patients spent weeks or months hospitalized or in intensive care units, where drug-resistant infections proliferate.
Furthermore, a nationwide shortage of masks, gloves, and gowns, coupled with staff shortages of infection control specialists all likely contributed to outbreaks.
Overuse of antibiotics has long been known to be a problem. Multiple guidelines across practice areas provide guidance on antibiotic use, but the early days of the pandemic saw much confusion about appropriate types of care to provide critically ill patients.
The problem of antibiotic use, though, doesn’t exist only in crises.
In one particular case I had several years ago, a defendant knew the patient had a viral illness, but prescribed antibiotics anyways. He explained that it would make the patient feel like he was doing something to treat the virus. He was adamant that the US preventative task force and the CDC are being overly cautious in their guidelines.
It is extremely difficult to prevail in any claim against a hospital for acquiring an anti-biotic resistant infection. Each claim is fact specific. Complicating claims, the negligence statute was changed recently to account for standards of care varying thanks to the pandemic. So, while negligence claims for infections were already complicated, the defense may be all too happy to point to the state of emergency the pandemic created.
