The New Superbug Threat

nineteen cases sword to their highest weekly level yesterday. Governor Rhonda Santis says the jump in numbers is partly an illusion caused by this state ramping up testing, and he says isolated outbreaks and prisons, long term care facilities, and agriculture communities may be skewing the numbers higher, but a Bloomberg News analysis of publicly available data suggests those factors

aren't the cause. The percentage of tests coming back positive has jumped, undermining the idea that more testing is to blame. And as for prisons, care facilities and agriculture workers, cases are up dramatically even when you exclude those communities. In fact, without those examples, the rate of increase would be even more dramatic. In Beijing, a coronavirus outbreak that infected more than one hundred fifty people has been contained, according to

Chinese disease experts. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said more cases will be confirmed in the coming days, but that should only reflect people who are already infected. And finally, American football fans who had been hoping for good news were disappointed today. Anthony Fauci, the country's top and actous disease expert, said National Football League and college football seasons may have to be canceled if there is

a second wave of the virus. The NFL season is scheduled to start September t. Fauci said players would have to be in a bubble, isolated and tested daily for him to imagine how the game could be played this fall. And now for today's main story. Long before the COVID pandemic, another global health disaster was brewing, threatening to kill millions of people annually. Superbugs, germs even our most potent antibiotics can't defeat, pose a massive challenge to human health and

well being. The coronavirus, of course, isn't stopped by antibiotics, which target bacteria. Even so, antibiotics have been used liberally for COVID nineteen patients. Bloomberg Senior editor Jason Gale reports that could worsen the superbook crisis. In the first months of the pandemic, studies from China showed that almost all hospitalized COVID nineteen patients were being administered a cocktail of medicines,

including antibiotics. It's not that surprising. Studies of the Spanish influenza pandemic showed that the vast majority of debts were actually caused by a secondary bacterial infection. The flu virus landed the first blow, but bacteria delivered the knockout punch. So doctors caring for COVID patients have wanted to prevent

them suffering the same fate. I think it's safe to say that many patients with COVID receive antibiotics, especially the ones that are hospitalized, And I think part of that is that the picture of COVID can look similar to community acquired pneumonia. This is doctor Arnu Milani. He's an infectious diseases physician, a medical director for the infection prevention and antimicrobial stewardship programs at Saint Joseph's Mercy Health System

in Anna, but Michigan. Researchers in London analyzed more than one thousand coronavirus studies and they found that seventy two pc of COVID nineteen patients received antibiotics in the hospital. I think many patients um are getting treated for pneumonia or were being treated for pneumonia. But further researchers showing that bacteria aren't a major threat. Fewer than eight percent

of COVID patients have a bacterial co infection. Two studies published in the past month of showing another found that using antibiotics to prevent infections and COVID patients has no benefit that fits with the World Health Organization's guidance for managing these cases. The agency recommends against using antibiotics unless

the patient is suspected of having a bacterial infection. But one antibiotic was popularized, at least for a while, when political leaders touted combinations of the malaria drugs chloroquin or hydroxy chloric wine with the antibiotic zithromycin, and so early on in the outbreak, at least in the United States, there was quite a high degree of use of hydroxy chloric win and zethromycin Um. You know, without a lot of um you know, scientific evidence to support the use.

But I think you know with COVID, because so many patients are quite ill um providers, there's there's a tendency to try to want to do something the who says COVID has bolsted the use of antibiotics. Hospitals naturally have a lot of sick people with infections or receiving treatments like intravenous infusions, catholis and ventilators that put patients at

risk of an infection, so antibiotics are commonly administered. But when these medicines are overused, he gives rise to the emergence and transmission of multi drug resistant bacteria, and infections with these superbugs are more difficult and costly to treat, and they're more likely to lead to prolonged illness and death.

Ni says it's important that healthcare workers prevent spreading infections through careful hand hygiene and sterilization practices, and that they use antibiotics only when they're needed, and I think we want to make sure we don't take any steps backwards with respecting animalcuobial stewardship. Prudent management of these precious miracle cures has come under serious threat because of COVID nineteen.

According to Marion McKenna, she's an Atlanta based science journalist who has written books about antibiotic resistance, some tests needed to determine whether a COVID patient has a bacterial infection might not get done because collecting specimens from patients lower respiratory tracks puts health workers at increased risk of catching

the coronavirus. Marine says in those cases, antibiotics might be administered as a rec ocean um and many more people being treated prospectively against the fear that they're going to develop bacterial infections. Those things kind of fly in the face of stewardship. You've just violated a couple of the precepts of stewardship, which is you might not have exactly the right drug for the organism because you don't know what the organism is and you're not sure you're gonna

be using it for the right amount of time. Because COVID makes people sicker for so much longer. So this whole effort to try to suppress antibiotic resistance around the world by making sure we use antibiotics as conservatively as possible, is that particular effort is under threat because of the conditions created by COVID. Worldwide, at least seven thousand people die annually from drug resistant infections. That number will balloon

to ten millions. That's a year by twenty fifty, and will cost more than one and lost economic put without corrective actions. That's according to research for the UK government by former Goldman SAX economist Jim O'Neil four years ago. He recommended spending forty two billion dollars over ten years to boost the supply of new medicines, vaccines and diagnostic tools and introduce mechanisms to reduce the demand for antibiotics. Yet few governments have been willing to make the necessary

investment needed to mitigate the global antimicrobial resistance crisis. Marin says COVID hasn't lessened the likelihood of those grim predictions. You know. One of the things that makes antibiotic resistance so challenging is that as the bugs get worse and worse, we don't have the drugs to combat them, to take the next jump in that game of leap drug between bug and drug because making antibiotics has become so profoundly

unsatisfying for pharmaceutical manufacturers. That is also not going to change in the setting of COVID right because manufacturers or let's say, drug developers, discoverers and developers all over the world are now turning to looking for anti virals. Marins's antibiotic developers have told her they're going through their drug libraries looking for potential anti virals instead of antibiotics because

that's what's needed now. So between the economic disincentives to develop antibiotics right now and the potential incentives to spend your time looking for anti virals instead, we're just going to be further behind in that bug drug game of leap frog. We're not going to get new drugs any faster. The pandemic has, however, sent a stark warning to world leaders and policy maker is that global threats to human health a devastatingly costly No person and no country is immune.

Investing in ways to prevent and mitigate infectious risks isn't just smart, it's a necessity. That was Jason Gale in Melbourne and that's our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash Coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners

find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Tover foreheads Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson and Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Jason Gibb. Original music by Leo Sidron. Our editors are Rick Shine and me Francesca Leave. Bloomberg's head of podcasts is also Lea