Long-Term Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic On In-Hospital Antibiotic Consumption and Antibiotic Resistance

Dear Colleagues,

The global threat of antimicrobial-resistant infection has become worse in recent years.

During the first year of the pandemic, more than 29,400 people died from antimicrobial-resistant infections associated with healthcare. Of these, nearly 40% of cases obtained the infection while they were in the hospital.

It is well known that the COVID-19 pandemic overloaded our health systems and, as a consequence, compromised the correct application of antimicrobial stewardship programs and infection prevention and control protocols.

Several sources have suggested both a decreasing rate of community bacterial infection among hospitalized COVID-19 patients and higher rates of healthcare-associated infections due to MDROs, mainly in critically ill patients. Moreover, antibiotic consumption data reported that almost 80% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients received an antibiotic from March to October 2020, and nearly half of hospitalized patients received ceftriaxone and azithromycin.

This Special Issue focuses on the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on in-hospital antibiotic consumption and antibiotic resistance, and will consist of 10 manuscripts which may include original research papers, communications, results of clinical studies, and reviews.

We are interested in following areas:

1. Tracking antimicrobial resistance, including detection and reporting data regarding both the assessment of antimicrobial-resistant germ burden and antibiotic and antifungal use during the COVID-19 pandemic;
2. Pandemic-related changes to infection prevention and control practices;
3. Development of novel antimicrobial stewardship initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic;
4. Development of differentiated antimicrobial stewardship initiatives in different wards and settings;
5. Development of antimicrobial stewardship initiatives for specific microrganisms or conditions (e.g., UTI, RTI);
6. Evaluation of the impact of new antimicrobial stewardship initiatives (e.g., on patient outcomes).

Dr. Maria Musso
Dr. Gina Gualano
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Antibiotics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• antimicrobial resistance
• COVID-19
• infection control
• antimicrobial stewardship