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Cold and Flu meds in short supply

You may have to hunt for what you need

By: Craig Smith

Posted

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — A lot of people are sick right now, and if illness sent you out to buy cold medicine or many other over the counter medications you may have found the shelves are close to bare.

Nationally, and locally we’re hearing it can be hard to find meds like cough syrup. You may have to visit more than one store to get what you need.

Doctor Cara Christ is the former director of the Arizona Health Department. Now she’s chief medical officer for Blue Cross-Blue Shield.

She says so many people are ill with COVID, RSV and the flu that stores are simply selling out of things like painkillers and cough medicine. She says some prescription drugs are running short too.

“So there is a nationwide shortage of amoxicillin. And so we are hearing difficulties getting that antibiotics aren't normally used for these viral illnesses, but there can be secondary bacterial infections associated with those. So again, I think we've got a lot of different things impacting our environment in our communities right now.”

Basha’s relayed a message from Johnson and Johnson, which makes Children’s Tylenol and Children’s Motrin. Johnson and Johnson says high demand may make products less available but says “We are doing everything we can to make sure people have access to the products they need, including maximizing our production capacity, and running our sites 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

Doctor Christ says if you can’t find meds for your symptoms there are other ways to feel better.

“There are things you can do for nasal stuffiness and that type of thing. You can sit in a warm shower, a warm bath, you can give little ones over the age of one honey; sometimes that will help clear the congestion, clear the difficulty breathing for pain or you can sit in a warm bath to reduce your fever.”

Dr. Christ says a cold bath can make you shiver–and that will actually raise your fever. She says If you have a really high fever—like 105—-or you have serious trouble breathing, that’s an emergency and you should head to an emergency room.

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