https://www.wired.com/story/covid-19-may-worsen-the-antibiotic-resistance-crisis/ > Growing evidence suggests that, as the Covid-19 pandemic moves across the world, it may drag a second slow-motion pandemic behind it. Even though Covid-19 is a viral illness not affected by antibiotics, early data from hospitals shows that very high proportions of patients—more than 90 percent in some cohorts—are being treated with those drugs to cure or protect against secondary infections during respiratory illnesses or hospitalization. That’s being accompanied by an unmeasured but possibly huge number of people taking antibiotics on their own, or with the encouragement of fringe researchers, in misguided attempts to protect themselves. > Those parallel phenomena mean that Covid-19 could whomp up antibiotic resistance, pathogens’ adaptive ability to defend themselves against drugs intended to kill them. Resistance is already a crisis: It causes an estimated 700,000 deaths around the world each year, almost four times the death toll from the novel coronavirus so far. Diminishing the power of antibiotics could undermine an important part of the medical response to Covid-19.