Govt Asks Chemists to Ensure Adequate Stock of Essential Medicines As Covid-19 Cases Surge

The government has reached out to the All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD) asking it to ensure the availability of critical drugs for the management of Covid-19 and other essential medicines to meet health challenges in the upcoming days.  The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority and the Drug Controller General of India held a meeting with AIOCD on Monday regarding the availability of medicines in the current situation, an Economic Times report said.

In a letter to its district associations, the AIOCD said that the government is concerned about increase in cases of Omicron and Delta variants of coronavirus, so there should not be any shortages of medicines in the country.

The government has said there should not be any shortage of products including all types of cough syrups, paracetamol tablets, Vitamin C, zinc tablets, azithromycin and ivermectin. It has specifically asked chemists to maintain buffer stock of these medicines.

“Please ask all the members of your district to keep sufficient stock to meet out the challenges in times to come,” the Economic Times reported as the association’s letter saying. The AIOCD has also asked state authorities to ensure that there is no hoarding of medicines.

India is seeing a rapid surge in Covid-19 cases. The country reported a single-day rise of 58,097 new coronavirus infections, the highest in around 199 days. The active cases have increased to 2,14,004, comprising 0.61 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 98.01 per cent, the health ministry said on January 5.

A total of 2,135 cases of Omicron variant of coronavirus have been detected across 24 states and UTs so far, out of which, 828 have recovered or migrated.

During the second wave, demand for remdesivir soared and hoarding of the drug also caused availability issues and gave way to black marketers jacking up its prices.

“The government officials in their meeting wanted to ensure that there should not be any shortage of the drugs as India starts to see an upsurge again in Covid-19 cases,” said a member of the chemists’ association.

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