President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev addressed Kazakhstanis on the evening of Wednesday, July 8, in the midst of rising COVID-19 cases and deaths in the country, Toppress.kz correspondent reports. He urged citizens not to succumb to panic-buying thus causing roaring demand for medicines.
As reported earlier, due to a shortage of drugs in pharmacies, Kazakhstanis have been actively seeking help from each other on social networks. Many say they are willing to pay extra to get medications as soon as possible.
“Importing procedures of antiviral drugs that are not registered in Kazakhstan have been simplified. Now the applications are considered within a day. Registering of the new drugs by domestic producers for the treatment of COVID-19 has been accelerated. All these measures allow faster and more efficient delivery of necessary drugs to hospitals and pharmacy chains,” Tokayev stressed.
He noted enough medicines have already been purchased for the treatment of about 30,000 hospitalized patients, and in the near future the problem with drug provision will be resolved.
“All necessary medicines are already being delivered to the retail network, including 800,000 packs of paracetamol, 900,000 packs are expected to be delivered by the end of the week. 150,000 packs of antibiotics have been shipped to the pharmacy network. In the coming days, the problem with drug provision will be resolved. I again ask everyone not to panic and buy medicines for the future, creating an excessive demand for them,” he concluded.
