Coronavirus / Paracetamol prices jump by 40% in India

New Delhi: The coronavirus outbreak has started to hit India’s pharmaceutical sector, with the prices of key medicines rising. The price of paracetamol, the most commonly used analgesic, has jumped by 40 percent in India due to coronavirus.

According to a report in Bloomberg, this comes as an impact of shutdowns in China with the production of medicines being hit as supply chain disruptions prolong. Pankaj R Patel, chairman of Zydus Cadila told Bloomberg that, prices of paracetamol, the most commonly used analgesic, have jumped by 40% in India, while the cost of azithromycin, an antibiotic used for treating a variety of bacterial infections, has risen by 70%.

Patel further added that the pharma industry could face shortages in finished drug formulations starting April if supplies are not restored by the first week of next month.

The death toll from China's coronavirus epidemic climbed to 1,868 on Tuesday as 98 more people died while the total number of confirmed cases jumped to 72,436. Of the new deaths, 93 were reported from Hubei Province, the epicentre of the virus, three from Henan, and one each from Hebei and Hunan. Hubei reported 1,807 new confirmed cases, taking the total number of such cases to 59,989 in the province. Another 1,432 new suspected cases were reported from the rest of China.