(Yicai Global) April 12 -- Hospitals and pharmaceutical companies in Shanghai are striving to overcome difficulties in prescribing and delivering medications after the city of 25 million went into lockdown due to the recurrence of Covid-19.

Pharmacies are well stocked but as most are shut, only a few can supply patients in need, Yicai Global learned. Moreover, logistics firms and couriers such as SF Express, JD Logistics, and China Post have been hit hard since March 24.

Patients who are unable to buy drugs online are told to contact their neighborhood committees and apply for a special permit to visit a hospital for them, or ask volunteers to collect them instead.

Zhongshan Hospital, which is affiliated with Fudan University, is prescribing medicines online and letting staff from China National Pharmaceutical Group and Shanghai Pharmaceutical Holding or community volunteers deliver them, Yicai Global learned from the hospital.

As of yesterday afternoon, its online service had delivered most of the prescription medicines to areas west of the Huangpu river, since before April 6 it could not send them to the city’s eastern region because of a lack of travel permits.

The hospital’s cardiology department has slimmed down the number of drugs per prescription so as to have enough of those in short supply for critical cases. The medicines are delivered by employees at Shanghai Pharmaceutical Holding and online customer service staff speak with each patient by phone before approving the prescription.

Shanghai Pharmaceuticals has been piloting a scheme since the end of last month to pick up drugs from online hospitals through it logistics department and deliver them to the sub-districts in Shanghai’s Pudong New Area and Fengxian district, which in turn will get them to patients in locked-down communities, the company said via WeChat.

Editor: Futura Costaglione