--- title: Pharmacies Limit Sales of Kids' Pain and Fever Medicine description: CVS and Walgreens are limiting purchases of children’s pain-relief medicines amid constrained supplies and high demand. canonical: https://time.com/6242547/kids-pain-fever-medicine-shortage/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-12-20T14:36:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T15:12:21.989Z article:section: Health og:title: Pharmacies Are Limiting Sales of Kids' Pain and Fever Medicine og:description: CVS and Walgreens are limiting purchases of children’s pain-relief medicines amid constrained supplies and high demand og:url: https://time.com/6242547/kids-pain-fever-medicine-shortage/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78244eb0cfa0af24/698a38fad0753338eee6d9cb/childrens-tylenol-shortage-pharmacy.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: childrens-tylenol-shortage-pharmacy og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Pharmacies Are Limiting Sales of Kids' Pain and Fever Medicine twitter:description: CVS and Walgreens are limiting purchases of children’s pain-relief medicines amid constrained supplies and high demand twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78244eb0cfa0af24/698a38fad0753338eee6d9cb/childrens-tylenol-shortage-pharmacy.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Pharmacies Are Limiting Sales of Kids' Pain and Fever Medicine > Sponsored content. 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Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=0f1a9648-957e-4715-9881-8d7e8ece688b&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) by [Ike Swetlitz/Bloomberg](https://time.com/author/bloomberg/) ## Ike Swetlitz/Bloomberg Contributor Dec 20, 2022 2:36 PM UTC  On Dec. 19, 2022, shelves remain nearly empty near the section for children's medicine at a Walgreens in New York City. On Dec. 19, 2022, shelves remain nearly empty near the section for children's medicine at a Walgreens in New York City. Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency—Getty Images by [Ike Swetlitz/Bloomberg](https://time.com/author/bloomberg/) ## Ike Swetlitz/Bloomberg Contributor Dec 20, 2022 2:36 PM UTC CVS Health Corp. and Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc., two of the largest U.S. pharmacy chains, are limiting purchases of children’s pain-relief medicines amid constrained supplies and high demand. CVS is restricting shoppers to two products each for in-store and online purchases. Walgreens is limiting online orders to six products and isn’t setting limits for in-store purchases. Walmart Inc. isn’t placing any purchase limits, while Kroger Co. said it is asking shoppers to limit purchases to two kids pain medicine products. Rite Aid Corp. isn’t limiting purchases. “Due to increased demand and various supplier challenges, over-the-counter pediatric fever-reducing products are seeing constraint across the country,” Walgreens said in an email without offering more details on the supplier challenges. Pediatric medicines containing acetaminophen and ibuprofen, which relieve pain and reduce fever, have been hard to come by across the U.S. and Canada since at least October [as respiratory viruses spread](https://time.com/6224268/severe-flu-season-rsv/). Rates of hospitalization for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and influenza have reached heights not seen in recent years. The drugs don’t kill the viruses, but they do relieve symptoms. **Read More**: [_We Still Don’t Have At-Home Testing For the Flu—But COVID-19 Has Changed the Stakes_](https://time.com/6239093/at-home-tests-flu-rsv/) More U.S. children had been hospitalized in 2022 for influenza as of Dec. 10 than in any other year since 2009, according to [data](https://gis.cdc.gov/GRASP/Fluview/FluHospRates.html) from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [RSV hospitalizations](https://www.cdc.gov/rsv/research/rsv-net/dashboard.html) are the highest since 2018, when the agency began tracking. On Oct. 7, Canadian health authorities posted a [notice](https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/children-s-ibuprofenacetaminophen-shortage-what-you-should-know-and-do) online alerting the public that children’s formulations of both types of drugs were limited because of high demand. “Over the summer months, there was unprecedented demand for these products and supply had not kept pace,” Health Canada said in a [statement](https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/news/2022/10/update-on-supply-of-childrens-acetaminophen-and-ibuprofen-products.html). The Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a U.S. organization which represents companies that make the medicines, said the scarcity “is a direct result of the recent and rapid increase in demand driven by a rise in pediatric cases of respiratory illnesses including the flu, COVID, and RSV.” A CVS location in downtown Boston had a sign posted on Monday morning informing shoppers of the two-item limit. The only kids acetaminophen or ibuprofen product on the shelf was a 12-pack of store-brand acetaminophen suppositories. A spokesperson for Johnson & Johnson, which manufactures Motrin and Tylenol, said that the children’s version of those medicines “may be less readily available at some stores.” Haleon Plc, which sells Advil, a product made with ibuprofen, declined to comment, referring to the Consumer Healthcare Products Association. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6242547/kids-pain-fever-medicine-shortage/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6242547/kids-pain-fever-medicine-shortage/"},"headline":"Pharmacies Are Limiting Sales of Kids' Pain and Fever Medicine","datePublished":"2022-12-20T14:36:24.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T15:12:21.989Z","description":"CVS and Walgreens are limiting purchases of children’s pain-relief medicines amid constrained supplies and high demand.","url":"https://time.com/6242547/kids-pain-fever-medicine-shortage/","keywords":["medicine","wire","healthscienceclimate"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78244eb0cfa0af24/698a38fad0753338eee6d9cb/childrens-tylenol-shortage-pharmacy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ike Swetlitz/Bloomberg"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78244eb0cfa0af24/698a38fad0753338eee6d9cb/childrens-tylenol-shortage-pharmacy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"childrens-tylenol-shortage-pharmacy","caption":"childrens-tylenol-shortage-pharmacy","creditText":"Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/medicine/","name":"medicine"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6242547/kids-pain-fever-medicine-shortage/","name":"Pharmacies Are Limiting Sales of Kids' Pain and Fever Medicine"}}]}] ```