The how-to guide on getting medicine delivered straight to your door

Preparing some basic medicine for COVID-19 is necessary, with the loosening of rules on pandemic management in China. No need to wait in line at the hospital or hunt all over pharmacies, here's an easy guide to getting drugs delivered to your door.

Just like purchasing other items online, you can either buy from "Jingdong Big Pharmacy" on JD (京东) or "Ali Big Pharmacy" on Taobao (淘宝). Both of them are relatively reliable online drug purchase channels, but the operation methods of the two are a bit different.

Here are the specific steps for purchasing drugs on the two platforms.

Jingdong Big Pharmacy (京东大药房):

Of course, you need to download the JD app first. Type "京东大药房" (Jingdong Big Pharmacy) on its homepage and click to enter the official Jingdong Big Pharmacy page.

OTC

For over-the-counter drugs, you can type in the name of the medication, and select your product from a pharmacy and pay, just like buying other items online.

However, if you are buying drugs related to pandemic prevention and control (antipyretic and analgesic drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs, antibiotics drugs and antiviral drugs), you need to register and get approved before you can submit your order.

After submitting the registration information, you can submit the order and pay as usual. The registration will soon be approved and the pharmacy will arrange for shipment.

The Prescription Stuff

Compared with OTC drugs, the procedure for buying prescription drugs is more complicated. Before filling out the above registration information, you need to complete two necessary steps: complete consultation information and consult the doctor to prescribe the drugs.

Complete consultation information:

In this step, you need to confirm that the new user has been diagnosed with the disease and upload the relevant evidence.

Click "add new user" to complete more detailed information.

After submitting consultation information, the system will automatically jump to the network consultation doctor's dialog box. On this page, you can choose to add more details (补充信息) or not (没有补充).

Click "buy now" after the doctor orders you the prescription. The next step is to go back to the previous step of registering the pandemic-related information and making a payment.

Then your order is complete. Just wait at home for the drug to arrive.

Ali Big Pharmacy:

Open Taobao app and type "阿里大药房"(Ali Big Pharmacy). The operation is basically the same as JD.

You also need to register your information when buying the drugs related to the pandemic. Note that some of the information you need to fill in here is slightly different from the above.

For prescription medicine, you need to supplement the consultation information immediately after submitting the order.

After submitting the information, it will soon be approved for shipment.

Relatively speaking, the steps for buying on different apps are similar. But when you buy prescription drugs, the steps are a little bit simpler on Ali Big Pharmacy. If you have questions for the online doctor, you can choose Jingdong Big Pharmacy, which will display a chat box with an online doctor when registering prescription drug information.

By the way, in most cases, you will get the drugs the next day when buying on these two apps. But if the condition is urgent, you can choose to buy on Meituan (美团), which can be delivered within an hour.