Pfizer Warns of Medicine Supply Disruptions from Tornado Damage

A Pfizer pharmaceutical factory after a tornado damaged the facility on July 21.

Photographer: Sean Rayford/Getty Images

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.