The COVID-19 pandemic has largely influenced the medication needs of the masses.

It also created a huge impact on pharmaceutical companies dealing in respiratory, anti-diabetic, cardiac therapies.

Companies manufacturing these drugs are doing much better than others having anti-infective, gastro, vitamin or pain therapies in production.

The sudden change in preferred therapies by masses has just taken a sharp turn from the pre-COVID-19 period when gastric, vitamin therapies were most widely used.

Probably, the concern that coronavirus impacts adversely chronic heart, lung and diabetics severely had turned people into buying more of medicines for these ailments.

In the month of June, demand for cardiac drugs registered the strongest growth of 15.9 per cent in terms of value and anti-diabetic segment grew at 12.7 per cent due to continued buying during the period of the lockdown.

Similarly, the neuro segment (+14.6 per cent) saw higher demand but surprisingly value growth for respiratory went down to 4.5 per cent even though COVID-19 is known to impact this critical functioning of the human body.

Segments in acute therapies like anti-infective, Gynaec/Vitamins, pain, gastro where the demand for drugs has always remained higher than others, declined year-on-year in June clearly bringing out the shift in drug use by Indians, especially during the time of lockdown.