A pair of major pharmacy stores have instituted hard stop limits on customers buying children’s medicine due to recent reports highlighting possible shortages as the winter cold-and-flu season begins to slam into families all over the United States.
As explained via a recent report, Walgreens and CVS Health are putting in place limits on customers from purchasing Children’s Tylenol and other over-the-counter fever-reducing medicines.
CVS Health stated that customers have a strict two-product limit regarding all children’s pain relief medicines purchased via pharmacies or even online.
On spokesperson for CVS stated to TODAY.com that the company has tracked a trend of customers searching for flu, cold, and children’s pain relief medicines.
“We’re committed to meeting our customers’ needs and are working with our suppliers to ensure continued access to these items,” explained the spokesperson for CVS. “In the event a local store experiences a temporary product shortage, our teams have a process in place to replenish supply.”
Walgreens reportedly stated that online customers could only purchase up to six over-the-counter children’s fever-reducing medicines. However, this particular limit does not seem to apply to in-store purchases.
One spokesperson for Walgreens explained to TODAY.com that the store is “prepared and able to continue meeting the needs of our customers and patients.”
“We are working with our diverse set of suppliers and distributors to ensure our patients have the products they need most,” explained the spokesperson.
NBC affiliate WGRZ in Buffalo, New York, was told by Pharmacist Don Arthur that he first saw the trending shortages throughout nearby towns and cities all along the border of the U.S. and Canada.
He stated that the shortage “first appeared on our radar when we had patients calling us from over the border — Fort Erie, Niagara Falls, even as far as Toronto — because, apparently, up in Canada, the liquid forms of Tylenol are unavailable.”
There’s “just too much demand for the current supply,” he expressed.
The shortages take hold just as the annual flu season for the U.S. begins its rise, along with a number of other respiratory illnesses.
As explained in data sets released back on the 16th of December by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there has been a total of 15 million flu illnesses, 150,000 hospitalizations, and 9,300 deaths, 30 of which were in kids. These particular statistics have already shot past the totals for last year’s flu season and have only climbed from last week, which highlighted 13 million illnesses, 7,300 deaths, and 120,000 hospitalizations.
Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a report showing data for cases of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) that spiked in October. RSV usually makes children contract the symptoms usually tied to mild colds, but the impact could be much worse for those who have a preexisting heart defect or are immunocompromised.
The White House has also elected to speak about the current shortages being experienced.
“(The Food and Drug Administration) and the (Department of Health and Human Services) are tracking this very closely,” explained the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, Dr. Ashish Jha, to TODAY this past week. “The good news here is that we have plenty of supply. … Manufacturers, they’re working 24/7. Supply is actually up. The challenge is demand.”
The doctor claimed that illnesses such as influenza, COVID-19, and RSV are moving and spreading “at high levels” throughout both the elderly and among young children across the country.
“That demand is really unusual, unlike what we’ve seen in years, so we are seeing some of those mismatches,” he concluded. “But the supply is working great, manufacturing is going great, and we’re going to keep plugging away at making sure that there’s plenty of supply across the country as we enter the holidays.”
