Healthcare-associated Infections on the Intensive Care Unit in 21 Brazilian Hospitals During the Early Months of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic: An Ecological Study

Objective: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a global health crisis and may have affected healthcare-associated infection (HAI) prevention strategies. We evaluated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on HAI incidence in Brazilian intensive care units (ICUs).

Methods: In this ecological study, we compared adult patients admitted to the ICU from April through June 2020 (pandemic period) with the same period in 2019 (prepandemic period) in 21 Brazilian hospitals. We used the Wilcoxon signed rank-sum test in a pairwise analysis to compare the following differences between the pandemic and the prepandemic periods: microbiologically confirmed central-line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) and ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) incidence density (cases per 1,000 central line and ventilator days, respectively), the proportion of organisms that caused HAI, and antibiotic consumption (DDD).

Results: We detected a significant increase in median CLABSI incidence during the pandemic: 1.60 (IQR, 0.44-4.20) vs 2.81 (IQR, 1.35-6.89) ( = .002). We did not detect a significant difference in VAP incidence between the 2 periods. In addition, we detected a significant increase in the proportion of CLABSI caused by and spp during the pandemic, although only the latter retained statistical significance after correction for multiple comparisons. We did not detect a significant change in ceftriaxone, piperacillin-tazobactam, meropenem, or vancomycin consumption between the studied periods.

Conclusions: There was an increase in CLABSI incidence in Brazilian ICUs during the first months of COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, we detected an increase in the proportion of CLABSI caused by and spp during this period. CLABSI prevention strategies must be reinforced in ICUs during the COVID-19 pandemic.