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U.S. deaths from bacteria resistant to antibiotics, also known as 'superbugs', jumped 15% in 2020 as the drugs were widely dispensed to treat COVID-19 and fight off bacterial infections during long hospitalizations, enabling the bugs to evolve, a U.S. government report said on Tuesday. Hospital-acquired bacterial infections also rose more than 15% in 2020 from 2019, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said. (Mishra, 7/12)

Dr. Arjun Srinivasan, a CDC expert, called it “a startling reversal” that he hopes was a one-year blip. CDC officials think several factors may have caused the rise, including how COVID-19 was treated when it first hit the U.S. in early 2020. Antimicrobial resistance happens when germs like bacteria and fungi gain the power to fight off the drugs that were designed to kill them. The misuse of antibiotics was a big reason — unfinished or unnecessary prescriptions that didn’t kill the germs made them stronger. (Stobbe, 7/12)

Safety and quality initiatives by health systems reduced adverse events involving infections, medications or surgeries among patients admitted for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, pneumonia and major surgical procedures between 2010 and 2019, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reports. (Devereaux, 7/12)

Over the nine-year span, researchers found the rate of adverse events related to major medical procedures decreased from 204 to 130 occurrences per 1,000 discharges, acute myocardial infarction from 218 to 139, heart failure from 168 to 116, and pneumonia from 195 to 119. (Rodriguez, 7/12)