China is running out of cold medications since it relaxed its "Zero COVID" policies several weeks ago in response to protests. Lines of people have formed at hospitals in China, and medications have "flown off drugstore shelves," The New York Times reported.

Until recently China locked down entire cities when there was an outbreak of COVID-19 and forced people to be tested. The government strictly controlled the sale of cold and flu medication, requiring buyers to register their names, a rule to prevent people from using over-the-counter drugs to reduce fevers and thereby avoid detection by health tracking systems, the Times reported.

With winter cold and flu season kicking in and COVID-19 spreading, some desperate and sick Chinese are turning to folk remedies like canned peaches, while others travel over the border to Macau to get vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer, which were not approved in China to protect the domestic vaccine industry.

Chinese Sinovac vaccines are less effective, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The government has tried to reassure the public, saying it is prioritizing efforts to increase the nation's medicine stocks, and says the shortages are temporary.

Ironically, China is one of the world's largest producers of pharmaceuticals, making roughly one-third of the world's supply of ibuprofen.

The Wuhan government said it would supply 3 million ibuprofen tablets a week mostly to medical facilities. And in Jinan, more than a million tablets of ibuprofen were distributed to clinics and pharmacies, The Times reported.

The state-owned pharmaceutical company China Meheco Group says it will import and distribute Pfizer's antiviral drug, Paxlovid. China has several domestically produced vaccines, but no antiviral substitute as effective as Paxlovid.

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