COVID-19 and AMR

It is important to remark on how efforts to address AMR can progress in our post-COVID-19 context (Will and Kamenshchikova, 2020). As we show in a following section, the pandemic is extremely newsworthy and overshadows AMR, though the links between the pandemic and the ‘superbugs’ crisis may benefit political and policy attention to AMR. Public health systems are under strain due to the pandemic, making the AMR agenda difficult to pursue. COVID-19 may also complicate and compound the microbiology of AMR and change patterns of antimicrobial use, if not in Australia, very possibly in other nations. The pandemic has revealed some breaking points in social systems that are likely to be salient for AMR (lower socio-economically resourced communities, people from CALD backgrounds).

However, COVID-19 has shown that the Australian general public have, by and large, participated in public health actions to prevent transmission of the virus, undertake testing and comply with social isolation. We found in our research that participants were willing to talk about antibiotics and AMR, even when they knew very little. This endorsement of public health and trust in its expert knowledge systems is an asset for policy and communications on the global effort needed to effectively address AMR.