THE CONVERSATION | With the world’s attention on COVID-19, Lori Burrows, Professor of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University in Canada, writes that now is a good time talk about another pandemic: antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and the lessons that can be learned to better address AMR. AMR is a slower-moving pandemic than COVID-19, but one that is worsening every day. A recent report by the Council of Canadian Academies said that in 2018, more than a quarter of all infections in Canada were resistant to first-line drugs. In that one year alone, 5,400 people died in Canada as a direct result of resistant infections. Drug resistance bacteria is spreading every day, killing an estimated 700,000 people each year.