FILE - In this Friday, July 8, 2016 file photo, a prescription is filled at a pharmacy in Sacramento, Calif.
Total active shortages hit an all-time high of 323 in this year's first quarter, according to the University of Utah Drug Information Service. That's up about 86% from a 10-year low of 174 last reached in 2017. We have, overall, relatively few manufacturers. halted inspections during COVID. Now they're back, at factories that maybe haven't been inspected for five or six years. They're finding some things to fix. Those fixes can take anywhere from 6 to 18 months for production to get fully back on schedule.
It's not the FDA's fault. We want them to find those quality deficits. But when FDA goes out looking all at once, it can be pretty disruptive.A: Generic, injectable hospital drugs or older drugs. They are usually pretty low cost. There's not a lot of resilience in the supply chain for another company to make up the difference.