Mumbai chemists witnessed a drop in the sales of medicines related to cold and cough by 40 per cent in the month of March, April and May this year, reveals a survey conducted by the pharma association in the city. This comes after the third wave when cases had dropped drastically, leading to a drop in sales compared to last year during the same period.
The survey was conducted through google forms which were circulated to more than 140 authorized persons (distributors/marketers) from pharmaceutical companies responding to survey.
As per the survey, 72 per cent of the respondents said that there has been a more than 40 per cent decline in the sale of cough syrups and other prescribed medicines for cold and cough.
Abhay Pandey, President, All Food and Drugs License Holders Foundation (AFDLHF), said the main reason for conducting the survey was to understand the current demand of the sales rate of cough and cold medicines across the chemist.
“We had learnt that the demands for these medicines had dropped due to which we surveyed 140 pharmaceutical companies who responded to it, and we came to know sales have dropped this year compared to last year when the pandemic was at its peak. Meanwhile, we believe that demand will increase again considering there is a spike in cases over the month and it will increase further,” Pandey said.
Pandey further said that there are other factors as well due to which sales have come down over the last two years, adding that people are not much aware of the virus and they prefer home remedies over purchasing medicines from chemists.
“Besides, less number of Covid-19 cases, other factors such as people getting habitual for home remedies to boost their immunity, healthy lifestyle and double vaccination, decrease the number of viral infection cases has led to declining in sales of medicines at drug stores,” he said.
One of the chemists outside the civic-run King Edward Memorial Hospital said the current sale of cough and cold has dropped by 10-15 per cent over the last three months due to which they have stopped procuring medicines in bulk.
“We are not getting as many customers who asked for cough and cold medicines compared to last year. Now we hardly sell 1-2 per cent cough and cold medicines monthly,” he said.
