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Salon
Salon
Science
Arthur Allen

No Operation Warp Speed for antibiotics

Antibiotics are placed in petri dishes filled with bacteria. In the dish on the left the bacteria will not develop near the antibiotics. In the right petri dish, antibiotic resistant bacteria are growing. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Forget COVID-19, monkeypox, and other viruses for the moment and consider another threat troubling infectious disease specialists: common urinary tract infections, or UTIs, that lead to emergency room visits and even hospitalizations because of the failure of oral antibiotics.

There's no Operation Warp Speed charging to rescue us from the germs that cause these infections, which expanded their range during the first year of the pandemic, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. In the past year, the FDA declined to approve two promising oral drugs — sulopenem and tebipenem — to treat drug-resistant UTIs, saying it needed more evidence they work as well as current drugs.

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