News Chinese travellers in Japan emptying pharmacy shelves

[thomas]

While the number of COVID-19 sufferers in China seems to hover around a quarter of a billion, Chinese travellers in Japan appear to be emptying pharmacies in Tokyo, according to Asahi Shimbun.

Photo credit: Go Takahashi​

A particularly popular brand of cold medicine is Pabron Gold A produced by Taisho Pharmaceutical Co. Some drug stores limit purchases to one box per customer and only display sample boxes on shelves. Customers are required to take the empty box to the register to make a purchase. A woman from China's Anhui province visiting Japan for business reasons went on a medicinal shopping spree after accessing Chinese social media to determine what was popular in her home country. While most of the products she bought had limits of two boxes, she still paid about 20,000 yen ($150) for around a dozen boxes, including cold medicine for children as well as painkillers. She explained that she frequented drug stores when she had free time and made purchases for relatives and friends who had asked her to buy the medicine when in Japan. With reports China is bracing for another tsunami-level wave of COVID-19 cases, many drug stores there have simply run out of stocks of cold medicines believed to help alleviate novel coronavirus symptoms.

Chinese buying spree empties cold medicine stocks in Japan | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis