Antimicrobial resistance and infection control
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Antimicrob Resist Infect Control · Feb 2021
Systematic screening on admission for SARS-CoV-2 to detect asymptomatic infections.
The proportion of asymptomatic carriers of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) remains elusive and the potential benefit of systematic screening during the SARS-CoV-2-pandemic is controversial. We investigated the proportion of asymptomatic inpatients who were identified by systematic screening for SARS-CoV-2 upon hospital admission. Our analysis revealed that systematic screening of asymptomatic inpatients detects a low total number of SARS-CoV-2 infections (0.1%), questioning the cost-benefit ratio of this intervention. Even when the population-wide prevalence was low, the proportion of asymptomatic carriers remained stable, supporting the need for universal infection prevention and control strategies to avoid onward transmission by undetected SARS-CoV-2-carriers during the pandemic.
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Antimicrob Resist Infect Control · Feb 2021
Effects of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on antimicrobial prevalence and prescribing in a tertiary hospital in Singapore.
The deployment of antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) teams to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic can lead to a loss of developed frameworks, best practices and leadership resulting in adverse impact on antimicrobial prescribing and resistance. We aim to investigate effects of reduction in AMS resources during the COVID-19 pandemic on antimicrobial prescribing. ⋯ During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was no increase in antimicrobial prescribing and no significant differences in antimicrobial prescribing quality indicators.