US releasing prescription flu medication from strategic national stockpile

The Division of Well being and Human Providers mentioned on Wednesday it would launch prescription flu medicine from the strategic nationwide stockpile amid an unusually early and extreme flu season.

Components of the US are being hit onerous by a mix of respiratory viruses, together with the flu, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), and COVID-19.

Tamiflu, or oseltamivir phosphate, is available in liquid and capsule kind and fights the flu by stopping the virus from multiplying in an contaminated individual’s physique. 

The FDA doesn’t at the moment checklist Tamiflu as being in a nationwide scarcity, however is conscious of “localized shortages the place demand is very excessive.” 

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Different drugs are additionally in brief provide. Some pharmacies, together with Walgreens and CVS, have positioned limits on purchases of youngsters’s ache reduction medicine. 

The FDA warned final month of an “acute scarcity” of amoxicillin, an antibiotic used to deal with bacterial respiratory infections. 

A surge in flu and respiratory sicknesses are creating medicine shortages, together with this South Florida pharmacy with no youngsters’s Tylenol in inventory on Friday, Dec. 9, 2022. 
(Cindy Krischer Goodman/South Florida Solar Sentinel/Tribune Information Service by way of Getty Photographs)

The CDC estimates that there have been at the least 15 million sicknesses up to now this flue season, leading to 150,000 hospitalizations, and 9,300 deaths. 

For the week ending Dec. 10, 48 jurisdictions have been experiencing excessive or very excessive flu exercise, whereas simply three have been experiencing average exercise, in response to the CDC.