It has been a wild fall season for sicknesses in Maine and beyond, especially when you consider that nearly 100 Maine schools are currently in illness outbreak status.

That doesn't mean that those schools are all closed, though some are; it means that at least 15 percent of the school body is out with illness.

As a parent, it is so hard to watch your child be sick any time of the year, but when it's cold and dreary out, it somehow makes it worse.

Is it just me or does it seem like the cough that the littles get when they go back to school seems to linger around until summer break? I mean, seriously!

And, most times, the only thing we can do to treat these ailments is children's cough and cold medicine. You know the kind you find on the top shelf near the pharmacy at your local grocer.

Well, those items are now getting harder, actually near impossible, to find.

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According to WGME 13, a major increase in demand for these children's cold and cough medicines has led to such a severe shortage that thousands of shelves around Maine are actually completely bare.

Have you seen it?

Some stores are even putting a cap on children's medicine when it IS in stock. According to WGME, CVS drug stores are now limiting children's pain relief medicine to two per purchase. Similarly, the news station says that Walgreens is putting a cap of six for online orders of kids' fever medicine.

Dr. Dora Anne Mills, Chief Health Improvement Officer at MaineHealth, told WGME in part that she believes the years of masking could have played a role in kids seemingly being sicker than normal this year.

Additionally, the Biden administration has released thousands of doses of Tamiflu from the United States stockpile.

This is a developing story and we will continue to keep it updated as more information becomes available.

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