The US gets a large part of its drugs from India, who is sourcing the raw ingredients from China.
You are relieved. A sore throat sent you to the doctor, and even though this is not a strong symptom of the coronavirus, you were afraid you might be sick with it. After a throat culture is taken, your diagnosis comes back from the lab: you have strep throat. You go to the local drugstore to fill your prescription to fight off the bacteria but there is a problem: the drug best used to treat your strep is now in short supply. You can’t get it.
This is a fictional account. It may not be the case that antibiotics used to treat strep throat are in any way in short supply right now in the West. It is true, however, that the coronavirus pandemic has affected the ability of people in North America and Europe to get their hands on some generic drugs, and this is could pose a problem. Why is this the case?
It has to do with the drugs’ supply chain. As CNN details on its website, many generic pharmaceuticals do not originate in the US. They are actually imported from India. And India does not have all the ingredients to make them from scratch, either. India, in turn, is said to get almost 70% of their active pharmaceutical ingredients from China.
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According to CNN, 90% of all prescriptions Americans fill are for generic drugs, and about one third of all medications Americans consume are made in India. Impressive.
So, what happened when everyone went into lockdown?
As you can imagine, once China closed its borders and shut down its country due to the coronavirus pandemic, things started to get tricky.
During the height of China’s experience with the coronavirus pandemic, many of the factories within its borders were closed. This included those that manufacture the active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) that India needs to make its meds.
As a result, when the shutdown happened, some Indian pharmaceutical companies chartered private planes to transport APIs out of China, and others did what they could.
“We immediately had to scramble our purchase and supply chain teams to ensure we had adequate raw materials,” said Vinay Pinto, executive director at Wallace Pharma, one of India’s largest manufacturers of hydroxychloroquine, to CNN.
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“We actively tried to source the stock held by local merchant traders. This was in smaller lots and much more expensive,” Pinto added.
China’s lockdown has since ended. That being said, PC Mishra, director of India’s Directorate General of Foreign Trade, said in late April, imports from China were down by about 40% in March 2020. That’s a big drop. Since India is reported to obtain about 68% of its APIs from China, this disruption in the supply chain could potentially be felt as far afield as North America.
Of course, trade will soon be back up and running in many places. India’s ability to source APIs from China will no doubt return in full some day. In the meantime, if you are finding it difficult to obtain the medical drug you need, or you can get it but the price has skyrocketed, rest assured this should be a temporary thing.
Should the US be manufacturing its own drugs? That’s another story.
photo credit: HQuality/Shutterstock
