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. 2021 Nov;26(46):2101020.
doi: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2021.26.46.2101020.

Decrease in community antibiotic consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic, EU/EEA, 2020

Liselotte Diaz Högberg  1 , Vera Vlahović-Palčevski  2 , Cátia Pereira  1 , Klaus Weist  1 , Dominique L Monnet  1 ; ESAC-Net study group  3 ; ESAC-Net study group participants
Collaborators, Affiliations

Decrease in community antibiotic consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic, EU/EEA, 2020

Liselotte Diaz Högberg et al. Euro Surveill. 2021 Nov.

Abstract

We present a European Union/European Economic Area-wide overview of the changes in consumption of antibacterials for systemic use (ATC J01) in the community between 2019 and 2020 as reported to the European Surveillance of Antimicrobial Consumption Network. Overall antibiotic consumption decreased by 18.3% between 2019 and 2020, the largest annual decrease in the network's two-decade history. We observed a strong association between the level of community antibiotic consumption in 2019 and the size of the decrease between 2019 and 2020.

Keywords: COVID-19; antibiotic consumption; surveillance.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Consumption of antibacterials for systemic use (ATC group J01) in the community, population-weighted mean, by ATC group, 29 EU/EEA countries, 2016–2020
Figure 2
Figure 2
Consumption of antibacterials for systemic use (ATC group J01) in the community, EU/EEA countries, change between 2019 and 2020
Figure 3
Figure 3
Scatter plot of consumption of antibacterials for systemic use (ATC group J01) in the community in 2019 vs change between 2019 and 2020, 27 EU/EEA countries
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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