When people caught Covid in the early months of 2020, they normally reached for symptomatic control using NSAIDs and Paracetamol. They are affordable, widely available over the counter, have a well-established benefit-risk profile and are good at managing fever, body aches, and headache.
At the time there was pressure on supply, but looking back what happened to prices?
Now, five years after the shock of Covid we can see that prices for key symptom control products rose rapidly in late 2019 and early 2020, and only began to fall again in mid to late 2020.
The one product in our analysis which didn’t quite follow the standard trend is Paracetamol Tabs 500mg 16 which was priced to pharmacies at about £0.18 before the pandemic, rose to £0.51 in May 2020, and then stabilised at £0.33 thereafter. There is no clear reason why the price doubled in the long term, but it may have allowed manufacturers to reassess this product’s profitability.
All of this is in the past and you might think best forgotten. But there are other zoonotic diseases out there and no one can guarantee there won’t be another pandemic.