News Coverage and Drug Shortages during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Several drugs repurposed as COVID-19 treatment are in short supply. We collect data from MediaCloud and Google Health Trends about eight drugs proposed for repurposing as COVID-19 treatments and reported to be in shortage by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from January 1, 2020 through June 30, 2020. We find that news media coverage could have contributed to shortages due to hoarding by individuals and stockpiling by institutions, and that search trends appear to accurately discriminate between individual hoarding and institutional stockpiling.