Alarm raised over use of antibiotics for UK Covid patients

Tens of thousands of Covid-19 patients were unnecessarily prescribed antibiotics during the first wave of the pandemic in the UK, raising the spectre of an acceleration in antimicrobial resistance (AMR), according to the largest study of its kind so far. The study of nearly 49,000 patients, published in The Lancet Microbe, found that the majority were given antibiotics despite not having a confirmed bacterial infection.