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EU agency: Covid pandemic led to a surge in superbug infections

Infections from some antibiotic-resistant pathogens known as superbugs have more than doubled in healthcare facilities in Europe, an EU agency said on Thursday, providing further evidence of the wider impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control report said reported cases of two highly drug-resistant pathogens increased in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, then sharply jumped in 2021.

The surge stemmed from outbreaks in intensive care units of hospitals and in European Union countries where antimicrobial-resistant infections were already widespread, ECDC official Dominique Monnet told a news conference.

Data showed that in Europe last year, reported cases of the Acinetobacter bacteria group more than doubled compared with pre-pandemic annual numbers. Cases of another bacteria, Klebsiella pneumonia, which is resistant to last-resort antibiotics, jumped by 31% in 2020 and by 20% in 2021.

The report did not include data on how many people died from the infections in 2020 and 2021. Experts say it can be challenging to definitively attribute the cause of death when patients were hospitalized for COVID-19, for example.

Some scientists link the rise in hospital-acquired superbug infections during the pandemic to wider antibiotic prescriptions to treat COVID-19 and other bacterial infections during long hospital stays.