Common infections will kill millions if drug resistance through misuse of antibiotics is not curbed, says England’s ex-chief medical officer

The Covid-19 pandemic will “look minor” compared with what humanity faces from the growing number of superbugs resistant to current drugs, Prof Dame Sally Davies, England’s former chief medical officer, has warned.

Davies, who is now the UK’s special envoy on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), lost her goddaughter two years ago to an infection that could not be treated.

She paints a bleak picture of what could happen if the world fails to tackle the problem within the next decade, warning that the issue is “more acute” than climate change. Drug-resistant infections already kill at least 1.2 million people a year.

“It looks like a lot of people with untreatable infections, and we would have to move to isolating people who were untreatable in order not to infect their families and communities. So it’s a really disastrous picture. It would make some of Covid look minor,” said Davies, who is also the first female master of Trinity College, Cambridge.