Singapore reacts to Chinese panic buying Panadol with grumbles, scorn: ‘it’s not an exotic medicine’

Name: Dental clinic gives away fever tablets amid medicine shortage in China
Uploaded: 2022-12-22T11:05:43.000Z
Duration: 1 min 27 s
Description: Dental clinic gives away fever tablets amid medicine shortage in China

Medicine stocks are vanishing from pharmacy shelves in Singapore as worried Chinese nationals buy up supplies to send home to their loved ones

It’s sparked a debate on paracetamol’s abundance and the benefits of simply ‘drinking water and resting up’ – as some entrepreneurs seek to cash in

3-MIN READ3-MIN

Kimberly Limin Singapore

Published: 7:05pm, 22 Dec 2022Updated: 7:48pm, 22 Dec 2022

WeChat groups sharing tips on supplies, queues at courier firms and a shortage of Panadol – anxious Chinese nationals in Singapore are hoovering up medicines to help relatives back home as Covid-19 rips through the last major population on Earth shielded until now from the worst of the pandemic.

But as stock vanishes from shelves in Singapore’s pharmacies, some locals are grumbling at the sudden shortages of everyday medicines for a crisis that’s been a long time in the making and is unfolding far away.

China dropped its zero-Covid defences this month after nationwide protests without precedent in recent years, wiping away the strictest pandemic controls of any country virtually overnight.

The result has been a surging caseload, reports of overwhelmed medical facilities and shortages of antigen test kits at many pharmacies across the country.

01:27

Dental clinic gives away fever tablets amid medicine shortage in China

This Week in Asia visited six different pharmacies in Singapore and found Panadol products, a well-known brand of paracetamol trusted to help ease Covid-19 symptoms, either in short supply or completely absent.