Chinese Pharmacies Struggle to Stock Medication as Covid Spreads

Despite the government reassurances and only a negligible increase in officially reported Covid-19 cases and deaths, anecdotal evidence paints a different picture: crematoriums running at full tilt, hospitals strained and pharmacy shelves cleaned out. The drug shortages in China have rippled out to Singapore and Hong Kong, where worried relatives have rushed to send medicines back home.

The absence of data makes it hard to verify the scale or extent of infections now sweeping through China. The government says fewer than 3,000 new cases of Covid-19 have been recorded nationwide on average for the past five days, a number that most health experts say is far short of what their models predict. Chinese health officials also said this week that their definition of Covid-related deaths excludes patients with an underlying condition from the tally.

China has bristled at suggestions it has obscured the number of cases. On Thursday, the World Health Organization’s emergencies director, Mike Ryan, said Chinese officials appeared to be struggling to provide an accurate account of events on the ground, citing the discrepancy between the official claim of a low number of cases in intensive-care units and anecdotal evidence that those wards are filling up. There were 416 patients classified as severe cases nationwide on Thursday, official data show.

U.S. Secretary of State

Antony Blinken,

in a phone call with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday, discussed the coronavirus pandemic and “underscored the importance of transparency for the international community,” according to a statement from the State Department. The Chinese readout didn’t mention Covid.

The Wall Street Journal made phone calls to pharmacies in nine provinces and provincial-level regions—Shanghai, Fujian, Hubei, Sichuan, Qinghai, Guangdong, Guangxi, Anhui and Zhejiang. Pharmacists all said that they were short of fever medicine and cold remedies.

In a reflection of shortfalls of medical supplies,

Tencent Holdings Ltd.

, operator of the ubiquitous mobile messenger app WeChat, on Wednesday rolled out a new “mutual aid” service in which users can find neighbors in need of essentials and arrange to send them medicine.

One doctor surnamed Zhang, who works at a public hospital in Ningling County in the central Chinese province of Henan, said the hospital is selling fever medication only to patients at its fever clinic.

Dr. Zhang said that local authorities were concerned about hoarding and price gouging, adding that even hospitals’ own stockpiles were less than adequate. As for antigen testing kits, Dr. Zhang said they couldn’t be bought through regular channels—only second hand, at elevated prices.

“It’s a chaotic situation on the open market,” he said. “The problem right now is that many people are buying up medicine they don’t need out of fear, which causes the shortage. Those who really need the medicine cannot get them.”

Shanghai resident Chris Mei said he has noticed a marked shortage in drugs such as ibuprofen. Mr. Mei said he was just getting over a case of Covid himself and was able to recover rapidly thanks to Paxlovid antiviral drugs that he had bought during a recent trip to the U.S. He said he keeps a stockpile of everyday drugs in his home, which came in handy in recent weeks as Covid cases spread rapidly in his housing complex.

“We have a lot of neighbors, they don’t have any stock and we’ve been giving them some,” he said. “It’s been difficult for a lot of people to get any of that, even just anti-fever medication.”

Mr. Mei said the spreading outbreak has also been felt at the small plastic-components factory and trading business he helps operate, where around a fourth of his workers are out sick.

He said the absence of guidelines from authorities concerning the spread of Covid or what to do about sick employees is a contrast with earlier in the year, when the local government set stringent operating conditions for companies that wished to stay open.

“It’s basically workplace to workplace on what the regulations are if you’re positive,” he said. “It’s basically every company for itself.”

In the near term, China could face another bout of Covid-induced disruption as more workers call in sick. Even with the less lethal strain of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus now driving the outbreak, the lack of exposure to the virus over the past three years means China’s population lacks the so-called hybrid immunity that results in less severe symptoms and lower fatality rates, say experts including Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia in the U.K.

Hybrid immunity comes from the combination of exposure to the virus and vaccination, and provides a stronger and longer-lasting defense against the virus. With almost no exposure to Covid in the country’s 1.4 billion people before this month, China is relying on its vaccination program to fend off the virus. But protection from vaccination wanes within a few months and China’s vaccination drive had stalled early this year, Prof. Hunter said in commentary published by the U.K.-based nonprofit information service Science Media Centre.

The scramble for medicines and antigen testing kits has extended to the overseas Chinese diaspora, though many worried relatives trying to ship supplies back home have been frustrated by lengthy delays in the postal system.

In Singapore’s Chinatown, dozens of people queued at three courier companies waiting to mail medicines to China. Two popular Chinese shipping services, SF Express and Anjie International Express, each said it would take at least a week for the parcels to arrive in China due to surging demand. Staff at Singapore’s national postal service said it would take at least a month for parcels from the city-state to reach recipients in China, up from at most 10 days previously.

—Qianwei Zhang and Raffaele Huang contributed to this article.

Write to Dan Strumpf at Dan.Strumpf@wsj.com