How Will Pfizer Plant’s Tornado Damage Impact Congress’s Drug Shortages Debate?

The stakes on Capitol Hill rose another notch as tornado hit supplies of sterile injectable drugs at North Carolina plant. Workers escaped serious injury by gathering in designated shelters; patients may need effective legislation to escape serious injury from drug shortages.

Tornado damaged Pfizer's Rocky Mount, NC, plant
tornado damaged pfizer's rocky mount plant. what next? • Source: Pfizer Inc.

A tornado put an exclamation point on the debate in Washington over how to stop shortages of sterile injectable drugs when it touched down 4:43 pm Wednesday near Battleboro, NC, and tore through a warehouse at Pfizer Inc.’s Rocky Mount, NC, plant, scattering an estimated 50,000 pallets of finished sterile injectable drug products.

Workers scurried into designated shelters like the old gamma irradiation chamber next to the warehouse shortly before it was hit...

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