Introduction: Rising rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) globally continue to pose agrave threat to human health. Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are disproportionately affected, partly due to the high burden of communicable diseases. Areas covered: We reviewed current trends in AMR in LMICs and examined the forces driving AMR in those regions. The state of interventions being undertaken to curb AMR across the developing world are discussed, and the impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic on those efforts is explored. Expert opinion: The dynamics that drive AMR in LMICs are inseparable from the political, economic, socio-cultural, and environmental forces that shape these nations. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated underlying factors that increase AMR. Some progress is being made in implementing surveillance measures in LMICs, but implementation of concrete measures to meaningfully impact AMR rates must address the underlying structural issues that generate and promote AMR. This, in turn, will require large infrastructural investments and significant political will.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a serious global health threat and is predicted to cause significant health and economic impacts, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). AMR surveillance is critical in LMICs due to high burden of bacterial infections; however, conducting AMR surveillance in resource-limited settings is constrained by poorly functioning health systems, scarce financial resources, and lack of skilled personnel. In 2015, the United Nations World Health Assembly endorsed the World Health Organization’s Global Action Plan to tackle AMR; thus, several countries are striving to improve their AMR surveillance capacity, including making significant investments and establishing and expanding surveillance networks.

Antibiotic use drives antibiotic resistance. To systematically review the literature and estimate associations between prior exposure to antibiotics across World Health Organization's (WHO) AWaRe categories (Access, Watch, Reserve) and isolation of critical and high-priority multidrug resistant organisms (MDROs) on the WHO priority pathogen list. Embase, Ovid Medline, Scopus, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and ClinicalTrials.gov (from inception to 20/08/2020). Case-control, cohort, or experimental studies that assessed the risk of infection/colonization with MDROs. Inpatients or outpatients of any age and sex. Prior exposure to antibiotics that could be categorized into the AWaRe framework. Tailored design-specific checklists applied to each included study. For each antibiotic/class, crude odds ratios (ORs) were pooled through random-effects meta-analyses, both overall and by MDRO. Heterogeneity was examined. We identified 349 eligible studies. All were observational, prone to bias due to design and lack of adjustment for confounding, and not primarily designed to compare associations across AWaRe categories. We found statistically significant associations between prior exposure to almost all antibiotics/classes across AWaRe categories and colonization/infection with any MDRO. We observed higher ORs for Watch and Reserve antibiotics than with Access antibiotics. First generation cephalosporins (Access) had the least association with any MDRO colonization/infection (58 studies; OR = 1.2 [95% CI: 1.0-1.4]), whereas strongest associations were estimated for linezolid (Reserve) (22 studies; OR = 2.6 [95% CI: 2.1-3.1]), followed by carbapenems (Watch) (237 studies; OR = 2.3 [95% CI: 2.1-2.5]). There was high heterogeneity for all antibiotic/MDRO associations. Optimising use of Access antibiotics is likely to reduce the selection of MDROs and global antibiotic resistance. Despite data limitations, our study offers a strong rationale for further adoption of AWaRe as an important tool to improve antibiotic use globally.

Background: We assessed the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic in India on the consumption of antibiotics and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in the private sector in 2020 compared to the expected level of use had the epidemic not occurred. Methods and findings: We performed interrupted time series (ITS) analyses of sales volumes reported in standard units (i.e., doses), collected at regular monthly intervals from January 2018 to December 2020 and obtained from IQVIA, India. As children are less prone to develop symptomatic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, we hypothesized a predominant increase in non-child-appropriate formulation (non-CAF) sales. COVID-19-attributable changes in the level and trend of monthly sales of total antibiotics, azithromycin, and HCQ were estimated, accounting for seasonality and lockdown period where appropriate. A total of 16,290 million doses of antibiotics were sold in India in 2020, which is slightly less than the amount in 2018 and 2019. However, the proportion of non-CAF antibiotics increased from 72.5% (95% CI: 71.8% to 73.1%) in 2019 to 76.8% (95% CI: 76.2% to 77.5%) in 2020. Our ITS analyses estimated that COVID-19 likely contributed to 216.4 million (95% CI: 68.0 to 364.8 million; P = 0.008) excess doses of non-CAF antibiotics and 38.0 million (95% CI: 26.4 to 49.2 million; P < 0.001) excess doses of non-CAF azithromycin (equivalent to a minimum of 6.2 million azithromycin treatment courses) between June and September 2020, i.e., until the peak of the first epidemic wave, after which a negative change in trend was identified. In March 2020, we estimated a COVID-19-attributable change in level of +11.1 million doses (95% CI: 9.2 to 13.0 million; P < 0.001) for HCQ sales, whereas a weak negative change in monthly trend was found for this drug. Study limitations include the lack of coverage of the public healthcare sector, the inability to distinguish antibiotic and HCQ sales in inpatient versus outpatient care, and the suboptimal number of pre- and post-epidemic data points, which could have prevented an accurate adjustment for seasonal trends despite the robustness of our statistical approaches. Conclusions: A significant increase in non-CAF antibiotic sales, and particularly azithromycin, occurred during the peak phase of the first COVID-19 epidemic wave in India, indicating the need for urgent antibiotic stewardship measures.

A surge in cases of mucormycosis is occurring during India's catastrophic “second wave” of the COVID- 19 pandemic. Multiple actions are urgently needed to prevent and treat this life-threatening di...