CFA and Others Keep Antibiotics Working – Members Urge Public Health Authorities to Keep Tabs on Antibiotic Overuse in Pandemic

CFA joined consumer, environmental and public health groups in the following letter asking federal officials to better monitor antimicrobial use in COVID-19 patients, and to make the data it collects as widely available and accessible as possible. Recent studies suggest that healthcare providers may be dramatically overprescribing antibiotics to COVID-19 patients, only a small percentage of whom suffer from bacterial co-infections. At the same time, Trump Administration officials have sought to re-direct the flow of COVID-19-related hospital data to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a move that would insert unneeded complexity into existing data reporting channels, and diminish the transparency and completeness of established data repositories maintained by CDC. The groups’ letter asks that CDC actively monitor COVID-19 patient data and antimicrobial use in order to advise healthcare providers on how to avoid overuse.