Hyderabad: Dearth of takers for popping multivitamin, multimineral pills

Hyderabad: The multivitamin and multimineral tablets that were sold like hotcakes when coronavirus cases spiked have few takers at present.

While the pharmacy shops in GHMC limits and in districts have stocked up these immunity-boosting medicines, the sales of these pills have fallen drastically.

Earlier, there was a shortage of exclusive Vitamin C chewable tablets across the State with no pharmacy shop having stocks of it. But now, the situation has changed with Vitamin C tablets being available every pharmacy store. This apart, there was also a huge demand for devices like pulse oximeters, thermal scanners, digital thermometers etc with prices of these shooting up like never before.

The pulse oximeter that used to cost thousands are now available for Rs 300 to Rs 400, with noted brands costing a little extra.

Similarly, the sale of sanitisers has also come down drastically. Earlier, a medical store used to sell 20 to 30 sanitiser bottles a day, but now, the sales are limited to just one or two.

P Krishna Kumar, Acting General Secretary of Telangana Chemists and Druggists Association, stated that the general public was not showing the same zeal like before to buy and use multivitamins tablets. Except for using masks, people have stopped or put a brake to other things that they have been doing for the last six-seven months. Also, when corona cases were at peak, people suffering from chronic ailments like hypertension, diabetes, cardiac etc, used to stock up daily medicines for two to three months fearing shortage of medicines in the market. However, things have changed and there is no panic buying of medicines and drugs at present.