From Nature Careers India, 1 April 2020:
In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) came up with a new classification system for antibiotics on its essential medicines list: Access, Watch, and Reserve. Antibiotics on the Access list were narrow spectrum antibiotics — only effective against a small range of organisms — that would be recommended as first and second treatment options for common clinical infections. Those on the Watch list were broader spectrum, able to tackle a wider range of pathogens and therefore considered more important for human medicine. The Reserve list describes antibiotics of last-resort; only for use when all other antibiotics had failed.
As SARS-CoV-2 wreaks havoc around the world, antibiotics have fallen off the agenda; they are completely ineffective against a viral infection. But antibiotics do work against the disease-causing bacteria that are responsible for millions of deaths worldwide each year. Antibiotic resistance was a critical health issue long before COVID-19 exploded into hospitals and headlines, and it will continue to be one long after the pandemic has been brought under control. Read more.
