Here’s why it’s hard to find cold and flu medicine — and what to do now

Your nose is both stuffy and runny — maybe even running down the back of your throat — and you can’t stop sneezing between bouts of coughing, leaving your eyes watering and your body hot with a fever.

The signs of a cold are there, so you head to your local pharmacy for relief. But what you were looking for is nowhere to be found: cold and flu medicine.

You wouldn’t be alone in wondering why the shelves are bare.

“Pre-pandemic, we’d have an oversupply” of cough suppressants and fever-reduction medication for adults, said Jennifer Lake, an assistant professor with the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Pharmacy. “We didn’t have any oversupply in the last two years — it’s been consistent demand.”

Partly due to an increase in respiratory viruses like influenza and RSV, and because adult tablets were being chopped up into suitable doses for kids who faced a shortage of cold and flu medication of their own, that problem has only been exacerbated now.

“It’s like we’ve been stealing next week’s allowance,” Lake said.

It’s unclear how deep the supply issues run. Industry-wide data is hard to come by — pharmacies have one-to-one relationships with their suppliers and distributors.

Cough and cold medications relieve symptoms rather than cure respiratory viruses, so those who find themselves infected may be able to tolerate doing without them while the supply chain sorts itself out and demand hopefully decreases, said Lake.

But according to Jen Belcher, vice-president of the Ontario Pharmacists Association, Ontarians may find themselves waiting months for pharmacy shelves to properly refill.

While there’s a greater variety of cough and cold products targeted at adults, there’s intermittent availability for some cough syrups and tablets.

“Normally I would be able to reorder most of the (over-the-counter) cough and cold products from my wholesaler to replace what I sell,” said Belcher. But the “range of products has been severely depleted, and most of them have been on back-order for quite some time now.”

And if there are medication options available on the ordering system, most are only promised for the winter and early spring of 2023.

Belcher cautions sick shoppers from purchasing cold and flu medication on secondary markets like Kijiji, Facebook Marketplace and Amazon — both for the hefty resale price tag and safety concerns such as broken seals.

The same goes for panic-buying or hoarding medications when shoppers find a stray bottle on the shelf. “It’s a normal response,” Lake said, “but try not to take all of them. Plan for what you would normally have” to ensure those in desperate need of symptom relief can purchase it.

In the meantime, those in search of cold and flu medicine who are coming back from the pharmacy empty-handed can consider a hot shower to reduce congestion, Lake said, or ingest more fluids to help with the same. But always consult with your pharmacist who may be able to present you with more options than those on (or, at the moment, off) the shelf, Lake said.

“Unfortunately, this is not new,” said Belcher. “And it’s something that has become more and more challenging to manage because access to the right products for the right people at the right time is a critical part of how we provide health care in this country.”

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