Contrary to the government’s plans to expand the number of pharmacies in charge of COVID-19 treatments to 6,000, the number has not increased from 4,000 due to reduced prescriptions.

Moreover, pharmacies handling the COVID-19 treatments are predicting that more pharmacies would be applying to cancel their designation from the second half of the year.

As the disease control and prevention authorities plan to stop providing free COVID-19 treatments in the first half of next year, pharmacies that currently supply the drugs will also have to set up an exit strategy.

Pharmacy A from Seoul said, “Prescriptions are at most 1-2 a day. In the meantime, the government increased the