Officials of the local market regulator inspect medicine supplies at a supermarket in Shijiazhuang, North China's Hebei Province on December 15, 2022. As demand surges for anti-epidemic products after the optimization of China’s COVID-19 response, authorities are striving to crack down on price hikes and hoarding to stabilize inventory and prices. Photo: VCG

With more people getting infected with the fast spreading Omicron virus, demand for medicine such as ibuprofen has surged, making it one of the hardest to buy pharmaceuticals, but the situation is being eased as more Chinese cities ramp up supply.

Nanjing, capital of East China’s Jiangsu Province, said on Monday that it will release two million ibuprofen tablets into the market every day. Starting from Monday, 153 retail pharmacies will sell tablets that were extracted from boxes, with each consumer able to purchase a maximum of six tablets.

CR Hubei Pharmaceutical Co said over the weekend that a daily supply of three million tablets of ibuprofen will be released in Wuhan, capital of Central China’s Hubei Province, over the course of a week. Among them, 80 percent will be directed to medical institutions, while 20 percent will be distributed to retail pharmacies. 

Yichang Humanwell Pharmaceutical Co, a pharmaceutical firm in Yichang, Hubei Province, said it will double its existing production capacity, producing 3,800 tablets per minute. 

Aside from ramping up production, Hubei Province announced this month the lowering of pricing for ibuprofen. A total of 21 products including ibuprofen will become cheaper starting from Tuesday, according to a notice issued by Healthcare Security Administration of Hubei Province.

East China’s Zhejiang Province said in a meeting on Sunday that it would focus on strengthening production, storage and supply of anti-epidemic material such as anti-virus, heat-clearing and detoxifying Chinese patented medicines, and assist relevant enterprises to work at full capacity and increase production. The daily output of ibuprofen has already climbed to 40,000 boxes, and the production capacity of related key drugs is expected to further increase by the end of the month.

Although there are as many as 558 domestic companies that have obtained registration approval documents for ibuprofen, in fact, there are only two major domestic manufacturers of ibuprofen raw materials – Shandong Xinhua Pharmaceutical Co, which accounts for nearly 40 percent of domestic ibuprofen output, and Hubei Biocause Group.

“The company’s ibuprofen raw materials have all been requisitioned by relevant government departments, and the company currently has no ibuprofen raw materials to supply to the market,” Hubei Biocause Group said on Monday.

Global Times