White House Announces Release of Flu Medicine From National Stockpile Amid Skyrocketing Cases

Shortages of over-the-counter pain relievers and medicines have been reported across the US, with retailer CVS having to limit the number of children’s pain relief products customers can buy to just two products per customer. Fellow retailer Walgreens has also been limiting the purchasing amount for customers to six fever reducing products.

The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will release doses of flu medicine Tamiflu from the Strategic National Stockpile following an unusually early and heavy flu season that has hit the country.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the severe outbreak has left 15 million people ill, 150,000 people hospitalized and 9,300 people dead so far this year.

“Jurisdictions will be able to get the support they need to keep Americans healthy as flu cases rise this winter,” Dawn O’Connell, an assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), which oversees the CDC, said in a statement.

While the flu has not been a serious issue for the last two years, a move away from wearing masks and isolating following the COVID-19 pandemic has caused the flu season to begin about six weeks sooner than it normally does. As a result the HSS has allowed jurisdictions to access the stockpile, which was originally collected between 2006 and 2009 in anticipation of a pandemic; however, the HHS says the stockpile can be accessed in such instances.

While the White House has not revealed how many doses they will be releasing from the stockpile, states will be able to make requests for Tamiflu doses, which can be prescribed to treat the flu in people over the age of two weeks old.

The United States has been grappling with widespread flu cases alongside skyrocketing cases of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in children and climbing COVID-19 cases. The onslaught of cases has been coined a “tripledemic.”

While COVID-19 cases are still lower than when they were last winter, cases are increasing across the country and as of December 19, 78% of the inpatient beds in almost 5,000 US hospitals were filled and nearly the same percentage of intensive care beds being used, the HHS reported, with just 6% of those beds being used for COVID-19 patients.

The upswing in cases has led pharmacies to restrict the number of fever-reducers customers can buy, including those for children who have been affected by an unseasonal early surge of various illnesses, specifically among babies and toddlers, which is startling doctors.

Both babies and preschool-aged children are being diagnosed with the flu, RSV, parainfluenza viruses, adenoviruses, rhinoviruses and enteroviruses. A third of hospitalizations for the flu are in children and a third of those hospitalizations are for kids under the age of five, according to the CDC.

Some hospitals in the US have also detected an extreme and invasive form of strep that has killed at least 15 children in the United Kingdom since mid-September.

"There is no one virus that's causing pediatric respiratory viruses this fall," said Dr. Deanna Behrens, a pediatric critical care physician at Advocate Children's Hospital in suburban Chicago. "Unfortunately, it's all of them."

"We see kids where, when we do the nasal swab, not only do they test positive for influenza, but they may have RSV or enterovirus or adenovirus at the same time," said Dr. Mark Kline, the physician-in-chief at Children's Hospital New Orleans. "We've seen kids where we've gotten two or three viruses at once."

Children who were kept inside during the COVID-19 pandemic, which first took hold in 2020, were not able to strengthen their immune systems. Those same coddled immune systems are now being exposed, leaving children vulnerable to viruses. According to the CDC at least 30 pediatric deaths related to the flu have been recorded as of December 16.