The THE IMPACTS OF THE PANDEMIC IN BRAZIL ON ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE: A LITERATURE REVIEW

Abstract

Bacterial resistance is a serious global health problem, which has worsened during the pandemic due to the excessive use of antibiotics, sometimes without medical advice in an attempt to treat viral symptoms. Thus, evidencing the deepening of bacterial resistance, not only in the country during the pandemic, but also after it. The present study aims to analyze and highlight the influence that the coronavirus pandemic had on the increase in bacterial resistance. This is a bibliographic review based on articles published between 2017 and 2022 on the National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health (PubMed), Research Society and Development and Scientific Electronic Library Online (Scielo) platforms. Thus, the absence of scientific knowledge about the new coronavirus produced uncertainties about the best strategies to be adopted during the pandemic. In this scenario, the use of antibiotics in the COVID protocol deepens not only bacterial resistance, but also the clinical picture of critically ill patients, given its relationship with the 45% increase in multidrug resistance and the development of resistant strains that cause secondary infections. Being amoxicillin, azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine, examples of outstanding antibiotics used by patients affected by COVID-19. Therefore, it is evident that the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in this period aggravated resistance, mainly due to the absence of an appropriate combat protocol, which causes an extremely favorable scenario both for the development of superbugs and for the development of future bacterial pandemics.
Keywords: Antibiotics; COVID-19; Mechanism of bacterial resistance.