Ozempic is no longer in shortage. The FDA updated its drug shortage list in February 2025, marking all doses of injectable semaglutide (the active ingredient in both Ozempic and Wegovy) as resolved. Novo Nordisk confirmed it is shipping all doses regularly to wholesalers. The European Medicines Agency has also listed the Ozempic shortage as resolved.
That said, the shortage lasted roughly two years and created ripple effects that some patients are still navigating, from compounded versions of questionable legality to counterfeit pens circulating globally. Here’s what you need to know about where things stand now.
Why There Was a Shortage
The core problem was simple: demand massively outpaced supply. Ozempic was originally approved for type 2 diabetes, but widespread off-label prescribing for weight loss (along with the approval of the higher-dose version, Wegovy) created a surge that Novo Nordisk’s manufacturing infrastructure couldn’t keep up with. The company acknowledged it had to make “strategic decisions to prioritise distribution to regions and patient groups with the most pressing needs” during the shortage period.
The bottleneck wasn’t just about making the drug itself. Semaglutide requires specialized “fill-finish” manufacturing, the sterile process of loading the medication into prefilled injection pens. That step became the chokepoint. Novo Nordisk didn’t have enough facilities to fill pens as fast as pharmacies needed them, and scaling up sterile injectable production takes years, not months.
How Novo Nordisk Fixed the Supply Problem
The company has been investing heavily. In 2025, Novo Nordisk spent roughly 60 billion Danish kroner (about $8.5 billion) on capital expenditure, primarily for expanding production of active ingredients and fill-finish capacity. A major move in 2024 was acquiring three fill-finish manufacturing sites previously operated by Catalent, a contract manufacturer. That gave Novo Nordisk immediate additional capacity rather than waiting years to build new facilities from scratch.
The company is also freeing up production lines by consolidating its older insulin portfolio and shifting toward reusable injection devices and once-weekly formulations, which require fewer pens per patient. Capital spending is expected to remain around 55 billion Danish kroner in 2026, focused on further expanding the global supply chain, including packaging capacity and additional sterile production lines.
What Happened With Compounded Semaglutide
During the shortage, compounding pharmacies stepped in to produce their own versions of semaglutide. U.S. law allows pharmacies to compound copies of brand-name drugs when those drugs are on the FDA’s official shortage list. Once the shortage was resolved, the legal landscape shifted significantly.
Now that semaglutide is off the shortage list, the rules have tightened. Outsourcing facilities (large-scale compounders operating under section 503B of federal law) can no longer compound semaglutide from bulk ingredients unless it appears on a specific approved list, and it currently does not. Smaller compounding pharmacies working from individual prescriptions face restrictions too: they generally cannot produce drugs that are “essentially copies” of commercially available products. The FDA has said it won’t take enforcement action against compounders filling four or fewer such prescriptions per month, but anything beyond that is on shaky legal ground.
If you’ve been using compounded semaglutide, this is worth paying attention to. The supply of compounded versions will likely shrink, and the quality and consistency of those products was never guaranteed the way FDA-approved medications are.
Counterfeit Ozempic Pens Are Still a Risk
The shortage drove a parallel market in counterfeit Ozempic, and those fakes haven’t disappeared just because supply has stabilized. In 2024, the World Health Organization issued a global alert about falsified Ozempic pens. Some counterfeits carried genuine-looking batch numbers (one confirmed case used batch number MP5E511, a real Novo Nordisk batch number applied to a fake product).
There are a few ways to spot a counterfeit pen. Falsified pens sometimes have a dosing scale that visibly extends outward from the pen body when setting a dose, which genuine pens don’t do. The label may be low quality, peeling away from the pen or adhering poorly. Spelling mistakes on the outer carton are another red flag. The safest approach is to fill your prescription only through a licensed, established pharmacy rather than purchasing from online sellers, social media, or unfamiliar sources.
Switching Medications During Supply Disruptions
Many patients switched to tirzepatide (sold as Mounjaro or Zepbound) when Ozempic was unavailable. If you’re considering switching back, or if you switched medications during the shortage and want to understand the process, it’s not as straightforward as swapping one pen for another.
Semaglutide and tirzepatide work differently at a molecular level, and no standard dosage conversion chart exists between them. There are no national clinical guidelines in any major market that directly address how to switch between these two drugs. In practice, clinicians typically choose between starting the new medication on the same day the old one was due, or waiting one to two weeks before beginning the new drug. The washout period is generally preferred for patients who experienced significant side effects. Either way, you’d restart on the lowest dose and gradually increase, just as you did when first starting treatment.
Expect your provider to monitor you more closely during the transition, typically with a follow-up within two to four weeks to check how you’re tolerating the new medication, track weight and blood sugar, and adjust the plan if needed.
Can Spot Shortages Still Happen?
The national shortage is over, but individual pharmacies can still run out temporarily. High demand at a particular location, shipping delays, or regional distribution quirks can create gaps that last a few days to a couple of weeks. If your pharmacy doesn’t have your dose in stock, calling other nearby pharmacies or asking your pharmacist to check availability through their wholesaler usually resolves the issue quickly. Novo Nordisk has confirmed that all dose strengths (0.25 mg, 0.5 mg, 1 mg, and 2 mg) are being shipped regularly, so persistent unavailability at the wholesale level is no longer the issue it was in 2023 and 2024.