Hanoi runs short of cough medicine, throat spray

Tuan, 43, visited a drugstore named Hoang Minh in Thanh Xuan District for cough syrup on Monday but could not buy any.

He then visited four more pharmacies but none had any to sell. Tuan’s wife and father are recovering from Covid-19 and need medicine to ease their coughs.

Hoang Minh is considered the largest pharmaceutical transaction center in Hanoi. A representative of the store told VnExpress that for over a week now, cough and sore-throat medicines have been “scarce.”

Having contracted Covid-19 earlier this month, Nhung tested negative over a week ago but these days, has been coughing a lot. As advised by doctors, Nhung has taken herbal medicine.

Yet this week, as she visited drugstores around Dong Da District, the 25-year-old could not buy any cough remedies.

According to Thu Ha drugstore in Dong Da, many customers had asked to buy 5-10 bottles of cough syrup at a time and the store estimates that it “could have sold up to several hundred bottles per day” in case of sufficient supply.

However, the product is out of stock, and it is still not clear when it would be resupplied.

On social media, many sellers said they could not sell over ten bottles of cough syrup per customer as they do not have enough stock. They could wholebuy hundreds of bottles before, now they can only strike deals of less than 100 bottles at once.

In the past month, the number of daily confirmed infections in Hanoi has jumped 20 times from almost 3,000 cases in early February to 59,000 on average the past week.

Among the patients, many are pharmaceutical staff, which affects operations.

Nam Duoc JSC, a major pharmaceutical firm in Hanoi that specializes in herb-based medicine, including cough syrup for children and adults, sinus decongestant spray, stated its production progress has been greatly affected as the Covid-19 outbreak keeps spreading in the city.

The production department of the company has 220 employees, with 60 having contracted Covid-19.

The market demand, meanwhile, has increased sharply now that there are many Covid-19 patients in the community.

According to Nam Duoc, demand has risen three-four times among children and five-six times among adults.

In many cases, people who have yet to get Covid-19 had already bought medicine in preparation.