'Unfounded Prescription of Antibiotics to COVID-19 Patients is Death Threat': Anaesthesiologist Serhii Dubrov in the Project Ask the Doctor

On 3 February, the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation asked a renowned anaesthesiologist about the fight against COVID-19 in Ukraine. The meeting took place online as part of the project Ask the Doctor. The guest of the meeting was Serhii Dubrov, an anaesthesiologist, a doctor of medical sciences, a professor, the president of the Association of Anaesthesiologists of Ukraine, chief specialist of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine in Anaesthesiology branch, and the head of the department of anaesthesiology and intensive care at Bogomolets National Medical University.

He spoke about what to treat COVID-19 with and what to beware of during the treatment, about the prospects of vaccination in Ukraine, as well as about the forecasts of the pandemic's development, answering numerous questions from the audience.

‘90% of COVID-19 patients do not need prescription of antibacterial medications. An exception is when a patient's condition is critical or during intensive care,’ said Serhii Dubrov.

‘A person who, after a course of an antibiotic taken as part of COVID-19 treatment, gets to the hospital again, for example, with inflammation of appendicitis or other purulent inflammation, will not be able to be treated with such medications – antibiotics will cease to have effect on the body,’ Serhii Dubrov emphasized.

‘When an antibiotic is prescribed, although it is not needed, the harm can be enormous, and it even threatens with death of a patient. Therefore, I urge my colleagues to follow the requirements of the protocol of the Ministry of Health. And if somebody wants to prescribe an antibiotic, there must be a reason for this, clear laboratory criteria: cough and purulent sputum.

Eating large doses of vitamins does not cure or prevent COVID-19 either,’ added Serhii Dubrov. And he gave an example from his own practice when a patient was admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 and had rashes all over his body. It turned out that he had an overdose of vitamins by means of which he himself attempted to "banish" the virus.

According to Dubrov, three vaccines – Pfizer, AstraZeneca and the Chinese Sinovac, which will be used to vaccinate people against COVID-19 in Ukraine, have a high efficiency level. The Ministry of Health has already signed contracts with AstraZeneca. Sinovac's disease prevention efficiency is slightly more than 50%, and that of Pfizer is more than 90%.

Serhii Dubrov said that healthcare facilities are keeping records among their medical staff, and doctors are applying if they want to be vaccinated. No one will be vaccinated against COVID-19 against their will – neither doctors nor citizens.

Commenting on the prospects for a quick end of the pandemic, Serhii Dubrov replied that according to his observations the number of Covid-19 patients has significantly decreased in Ukraine, but it is difficult to make an accurate forecast for the near future.

When asked about the occupancy of hospitals in Ukraine, the doctor replied that there are enough hospital beds. Moreover, healthcare facilities began to return to the operation regime they had before the pandemic and resume the work of departments that were converted to Covid-19 departments in the spring.

‘Within the inpatient Covid-19 treatment, we see a significant decrease in the number of occupied hospital beds. Some healthcare facilities, for example, Kyiv Clinical Municipal Hospital No. 4, have reduced the number of COVID-19 beds since February 1, and some departments resume their pre-Covid mode of operation.’

You can listen to the full version of the broadcast here:

The project Ask the Doctor is being implemented within the framework of the program Rinat Akhmetov – Saving Lives.

'What is coronavirus? How to avoid the threat of infection? What to do in case of the disease? These questions still remain relevant, so the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation and Ukraine TV channel continue the project Ask the Doctor. These are weekly online meetings with leading doctors of Ukraine on the Foundation’s digital platforms. You can learn about the features of COVID-19 from a qualified expert, get a clear and understandable answer on how to behave in today's realities,’ said Yuliia Yershova, Chief Communications Officer of the Foundation.

Serhii Dubrov is the twelfth expert of the project Ask the Doctor. Earlier, questions on the Facebook page of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation were answered by Borys Todurov, a renowned cardiac surgeon, a professor and the director of the Heart Institute, by Svitlana Huk, a pulmonologist and the head of the infectious diseases department of Kyiv Municipal Clinical Hospital No. 17, by a popular paediatrician of the country Yevhen Komarovskyi, by Daria Yezhelenko, a therapist from Mariupol and other reputable experts. The recordings can be found on the pages of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation in YouTube and in Facebook. Short videos with answers from experts to the most popular questions are also available for viewing.