Intensive care medicine

2019-20 coronavirus outbreak

Emergency medicine

Biology

Cohort

Etiology

Virology

Bacteremia

Cohort study

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)

Outbreak

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Blood culture

Retrospective cohort study

Antibiotics

Microbiology

Infectious disease (medical specialty)

Internal medicine

Medicine

Pandemic

Disease

Journal of Clinical Microbiology

A surge of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) presenting to New York City hospitals in March 2020 led to a sharp increase in blood culture utilization, which overwhelmed the capacity of automated blood culture instruments. We sought to evaluate the utilization and diagnostic yield of blood cultures during the COVID-19 pandemic to determine prevalence and common etiologies of bacteremia and to inform a diagnostic approach to relieve blood culture overutilization. We performed a retrospective cohort analysis of 88,201 blood cultures from 28,011 patients at a multicenter network of hospitals within New York City to evaluate order volume, positivity rate, time to positivity, and etiologies of positive cultures in COVID-19.

Bacteremia and Blood Culture Utilization during COVID-19 Surge in New York City