Dozens of drugs made by Pfizer Inc. may be more difficult for hospitals to purchase because they were manufactured at the company’s North Carolina plant that was damaged by a tornado last week.
Sixty-five different formats and formulations of products including the anesthetic lidocaine; the painkiller morphine; and other basic hospital medicines “may experience continued or new supply disruptions in the near-term,” New York-based Pfizer said Friday in an email to customers. The email lists several different dosages or formulations of at least 32 drugs, plus two sizes of empty glass vials. Forty-six of the products were already in short supply as of Sunday, according to the US Food and Drug Administration.