Imperial College London (ICL)

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understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and national response

Antibiotics are medications used to treat bacterial infections, which are very common in England. Bacterial infections in respiratory systems and urinary tract are the top reason why patients consulted their GPs. If antibiotics were not provided when needed, infection might get worse and sometimes be vital. However, if using antibiotics when unnecessary, the pathogens will become resistant to the medication and make treating future infections impossible. Therefore we must carefully monitoring how antibiotics are used. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected how infections were managed and treated with antibiotics, for example, some hospitalised COVID-19 patients were treated with antibiotics despite such medication cannot cure COVID-19 which is a viral infection. On the other hand, social distancing measures and suspension of some primary care services made it challenging for GP staff to correctly identify a bacterial infection. In this project, we have been supported by the individual level de-identifided patient data collected from all GP practices in North West London, and three hospitals from ICHT, to continue monitoring whether antibiotic prescribing was appropriate. We also aimed to assess the impact of multiple complex factors, such as remote GP consultation via telephone or video, social distancing measures, changes in guidelines, might have influenced other infectious diseases other than COVID-19. Tackling AMRis one of the nation’s highest public health priorities. Our work is in line with UK’s 20 year vision of AMR, and England’s national strategy for infectious diseases. Benefited from the unique setting of our research group (NIHR HPRU in HCAI and AMR), which is a close collaboration between Imperial College, UKHSA, and local NHS trusts, research outputs can be disseminated and translated to policy and patient management guidelines rapidly to enhance the quality of care. In addition, the highly granular patient level data in iCARE environment provides knowledge complementary to the data produced by UKHSA at national level (covered larger population but less detailed). This work will help identify any sub-optimal prescribing practices in primary and secondary care, any newly emerged drug resistant infections, and any unintended conseuqnces associated with national prescribing guidelines and prescribing interventions.

18/08/2022

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