Pharmacies Are Limiting Sales of Kids ’ Pain and Fever Medicine

CVS Health Corp. and Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc., two of the largest U.S. pharmacy chains, are limiting purchases of children’s pain-relief medicines amid constrained supplies and high demand. CVS is restricting shoppers to two products each for in-store and online purchases. Walgreens is limiting online orders to six products and isn’t setting limits for in-store purchases. Walmart Inc. isn’t placing any purchase limits, while Kroger Co. said it is asking shoppers to limit purchases to two kids pain medicine products. Rite Aid Corp. isn’t limiting purchases. “Due to increased demand and various supplier challenges, over-the-counter pediatric fever-reducing products are seeing constraint across the country,” Walgreens said in an email without offering more details on the supplier challenges. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Pediatric medicines containing acetaminophen and ibuprofen, which relieve pain and reduce fever, have been hard to come by across the U.S. and Canada since at least October as respiratory viruses spread. Rates of hospitalization for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and influenza have reached heights not seen in recent years. The drugs don’t kill the viruses, but they do relieve symptoms. Read More: We Still Don’t Have At-Home Testing For the Flu—But COVID-19 Has Changed the Stakes More U.S. children had been hospitalized in 2022 for influenza as of Dec. 10 than in any other year since...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate medicine Source Type: news