Highlights
During the COVID-19 outbreak, antibiotic use has increased, especially respiratory antibiotics.
Healthcare resources are diverted to containment and management of COVID-19 cases, but the efforts of antibiotic stewardship programmes (ASPs) must run in parallel to mitigate antibiotic misuse and antimicrobial resistance.
ASPs must be operationally adaptable, and possess robust surveillance systems that detect subtle changes in prescribing and resistance trends.
This is an opportunity to execute a syndromic approach to guide antibiotic prescribing.
Continued engagement and education of prescribers to ensure appropriate prescription of antibiotics is important.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.