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Drug company inspections postponed due to COVID-19. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has postponed hundreds of drug company inspections as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, delaying new drug approvals and threatening needed supplies of existing medications, according to a recent report in the New York Times. The pandemic has also made it difficult to monitor the safety of drugs from overseas, which make up 60% of drugs sold in the United States. According to Mary Denigan-Macauley of the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog agency, the FDA made only three inspections of drug imports from March to October 2020, compared with more than 600 during the same time period in the prior two years.