China's Coronavirus impacting Indian pharma manufacturing

China’s coronavirus pandemic is turning out to be a huge disruptor to India’s $39-billion drug production by severely affecting the flow of imports of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and bulk drugs from the country, reports The Pharma Letter’s local correspondent.

India imports 70% of its API requirements from China, which amounts to $2.4 billion. These imports are used to manufacture key medicines such as paracetamol, metformin, ofloxacin, metronidazole, ampicillin and amoxycillin.

While prices of paracetamol have doubled, that of nimesulide has tripled. Prices for azithromycin, used for bacterial infections, and montelukast, for the treatment of respiratory infections, have also shot up by about 30%.