When Brett Cavin went to a pharmacy last week in Gresham, Oregon, to pick up his inhaler prescription for his asthma, he was turned away and warned it could take up to a week for the pharmacy to replenish its supply. Cavin is not alone, according to doctors and pharmacists who spoke to ABC News.
As emergency rooms and intensive care units across the country begin to fill with patients with COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus, hospitals and pharmacies have run into a new shortage: albuterol inhalers, a critical rescue medication that expands a user’s constricted airways and allows them to breath more easily.
