“The drug shortage is right on the heels of all this. It is coming up. It’ll be the next thing.”
In case you missed it, Senator Gary Peters spoke with Yahoo! News last week to discuss his efforts as ranking member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee to sound the alarms on the United States’ drug supply shortfalls before the COVID-19 pandemic and reestablish domestic drug manufacturing to reduce our dependence on countries like China.
Senator Peters’ work early on to address the drug supply shortage is just another example of him leading the way in the Senate to get things done for Michigan’s families and workers struggling in this crisis.
YAHOO NEWS: The coronavirus is leading to dangerous shortages of key medications
By: Hunter Walker
The full article can be read HERE.
- On Sounding Alarm On Drug Shortages: Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, the ranking member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, was raising alarms about the drug supply even prior to the pandemic. The U.S. medical system is already facing shortfalls in protective equipment, ventilators and coronavirus tests, but now Peters says drug shortages are set to become even more acute. “The drug shortage is right on the heels of all this. It is coming up. It’ll be the next thing,” Peters said in an interview with Yahoo News on Wednesday. In December, before cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, were reported in China, the Democratic staff on Peters’s committee compiled a report on “cost, supply and security threats” to the nation’s inventory of prescription drugs. The report concluded “active drug shortages in the United States” were “at their highest levels in almost five years” due to multiple factors including diminished U.S. manufacturing capacity and “overdependence on foreign pharmaceutical supply chains.” Those existing issues have all been exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis.
- On Shortages In Michigan: According to Peters, doctors in his home state of Michigan, which has some of the highest numbers of COVID-19 cases in the United States, have told him they have experienced shortages of drugs involved in the treatment of COVID-19 including paralytics and sedatives used to place patients on ventilators and more basic medicines such as IV fluids and drugs to avoid secondary infections during hospital stays. Peters predicted the problem is going to become a growing issue around the country and said the federal government needs to “aggressively start acquiring some of these drugs.” “They’re looking at shortages on some critical drugs … the ones that we’re most concerned about now are those that are related to dealing with patients on ventilators,” Peters said of the doctors in his home state. “It’s going to be a problem for the whole country.”
- On Reestablishing Domestic Drug Manufacturing: Peters also believes that part of that response should be reestablishing domestic manufacturing for drugs. The pre-coronavirus report on potential drug supply issues that Peters’s committee published in December pointed to dependence on foreign imports, particularly from China, as major issues endangering America’s prescription drug supply. ‘I’ve always been worried about our dependency on China, and I’ve always been concerned that the supply chain could be broken for a whole host of reasons,’ said Peters. ‘You cannot be dependent on one country … for something as important as drugs.’
- On National Security: Peters said drug supplies are a “matter of life and death for Americans” and vital to national security. However, he noted we approach it far differently than weapons, which we make efforts to produce domestically. ‘We make sure we can make tanks and armored personnel carriers and military equipment for the Army. We have to be able to make it in the United States,’ Peters said. ‘You don’t want to be dependent on another country, and you certainly don’t want to be dependent on a potential adversary,’ he added. ‘That does not make sense.’
