Major pharmacy retail chains including Walgreens and CVS have restricted sales of certain brands of medicine for kids online or in stores, per NBC News.
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In particular, Walgreens and CVS are implementing limits on things like pain relief medication.
The shift comes amid a brutal season of illness in the U.S. for children and parents with earlier and worse flu cases, a massive spike in the number and intensity of cases of Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection (RSV), and the coronavirus, per the New York Times.
“It all has a very Covid-esque feel to it,” said Meghan Laura Bernier, medical director of the intensive pediatric care unit at the Johns Hopkins Center in Baltimore, told the outlet in early November. “This is the pediatrician’s Covid. This is our March 2020.”
Across the pond, an intense version of strep throat is reportedly responsible for the deaths of at least 15 children in the U.K. since the middle of September, per NBC.
As such, parents have turned to cold and pain medicine, and the aisles are starting to feel the pinch. CVS told NBC in a statement it was restricting the purchases of pain-reducing medications to two packages online and in stores.
At Walgreens, customers are restricted to six units of fever-reducing medications for children online or in-person.
“Due to increased demand and various supplier challenges, over-the-counter pediatric fever-reducing products are seeing constraints across the country,” Walgreens told NBC.
The shortage is likely to last through the winter, per USA Today.
The influx of respiratory illnesses and colds has already made it a brutal season for parents. Amanda McDowell, a single mom in Springfield, Tennessee, told Bloomberg that she had to call out of work as a pharmacy tech for two weeks to help her son recover from the flu. He also previously had the flu and RSV.
“It’s been insane,” she said.
It’s also made finding childcare an even bigger crisis. McDowell says she makes $15 an hour, while the babysitters or nannies in the area start at $21 an hour.
It’s led to another few months of parents rationing leave, sick days, and taking calls on Zoom with children in the background all over again, the outlet added.