Online panic buying of medicine from other provinces causes shortages

An acute shortage of antipyretic medicines has prompted people to place orders in remote regions that are less impacted by the raging COVID-19 pandemic, reported ThePaper.cn on Tuesday.

Bloggers on some Chinese social media platforms have shared their methods of buying medicine at original prices.

They advised people to change their mobile locations to places where the pandemic is not yet severe, hire a person to buy the medicines for them on mobile apps that find people to run errands, and ask them to mail the medicines to them.

Counties in Guangxi's Zhuang Autonomous Region have become one of the main targets for online shoppers who apply such a strategy, which has caused some medicines in local pharmacies to sell out.

A pharmacy staffer in Qinzhou, Guangxi, said now each person is allowed to buy only one box of ibuprofen capsules.

Such behaviors have also drawn ire as netizens say the local older people who are not familiar with online shopping now have difficulties buying medicines.

If a person uses this method to buy medicines for his own use, it won't constitute a breach of law, said Zhou Zhaocheng, a lawyer with Beijing Anjian law firm, the report said.

However, if a person hoards the medicines and resells them for profit, then they might be held legally responsible, Zhou added.