There was a significant dip in antibiotic use during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, analysis suggests.

Charity Antibiotic Research UK said that antibiotic prescribing by GPs in England fell by 17% during the first 12 months of Covid compared to the previous year.

The charity said that the fall “hints at the scale of over prescribing in normal times”.

There have been big drives to reduce the number of unnecessary prescriptions to try to tackle the growing threat of antibiotic resistance.

Resistance occurs when bacteria mutate and can no longer be effectively tackled by antibiotics, meaning infections can become deadly.

Antibiotics are essential to treat serious bacterial infections such as pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis but they are sometimes used to treat coughs, earache and sore throats that can get better on their own.

The charity, which conducted the analysis with health research company Costello Medical, examined NHS data published on OpenPrescribing.net and found that prescriptions in England fell from March 2020 to February 2021 and remained steady throughout the year, without the winter peak of prescriptions seen in previous years.

Professor Colin Garner, chief executive of Antibiotic Research UK, said: “The dramatic fall in antibiotic prescribing during the Covid pandemic could be due to many factors including less
infection transmission during lockdowns and fewer visits to GPs.

“More work is needed to understand the extent to which each of these factors has resulted in this drop in antibiotic prescribing, but the data does tell us that antibiotic prescribing can be reduced to help protect us all from the danger of the growing threat of antibiotic resistance.”