| Summary: | To assess the putative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria recovered from routine screening samples and, more globally, the trends in time to first positive screening sample and carriage duration of those bacteria in patients admitted to a tertiary hospital, data from laboratory results were retrospectively mined over the 2018–2022 period. No significant differences could be found in the number of positive patients or MDR isolates per year, time to positive screening, or carriage duration. Extended-spectrum beta-lactamase producers were dominant throughout the studied period but their relative proportion decreased over time as well as that of meticillin-resistant <i>Staphylococcus aureus</i>. Meanwhile, carbapenemase-producing enterobacteria (CPE) proportion increased. Among the 212 CPE isolates, <i>Klebsiella pneumoniae</i> and <i>Escherichia coli</i> were the more frequent species but, beginning in 2020, a significant rise in <i>Enterobacter cloacae</i> complex and <i>Citrobacter freundii</i> occurred. OXA48 was identified as the leading carbapenemase and, in 2020, a peak in VIM-producing enterobacteria linked to an outbreak of <i>E. cloacae</i> complex during the COVID-19 pandemic was singled out. Finally, a worrisome rise in isolates producing multiple carbapenemases (NDM/VIM and mostly NDM/OXA48) was highlighted, especially in 2022, which could lead to therapeutic dead-ends if their dissemination is not controlled.
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