If your mental model of GLP-1 supply was formed in 2023 or 2024, it is out of date. The period when pharmacies were routinely out of tirzepatide and semaglutide for weeks at a time, when people drove between stores and joined waiting lists, has ended at the national level.
What replaced it is less dramatic and, for anyone who runs into it, still inconvenient: ordinary, localized supply gaps of the kind that happen with plenty of medications. Understanding the difference between those two situations is most of what this article is for, because the responses to them are not the same.
Where things stand, as of September 2026
The FDA declared the tirzepatide shortage resolved in December 2024. It declared the semaglutide shortage resolved in February 2025. Those were formal determinations about national supply meeting national demand, not marketing statements.
As of a check in August 2026, the FDA drug shortage database listed no current shortage of semaglutide, tirzepatide or orforglipron. Liraglutide injection was still listed as currently in shortage, which is worth knowing if you take Saxenda or Victoza, since a daily injection makes any interruption more immediately noticeable than a weekly one.
Two caveats attach to all of this. The first is that shortage status changes, sometimes quickly. The FDA publishes a public drug shortage database that anyone can search by drug name, and that is the authoritative place to check current status rather than a website's snapshot from a particular month. The second is more important, and it is the point most of this article turns on.
Why resolved does not mean in stock
A resolved shortage is a national supply statement. It means the manufacturer can meet demand at the level of the country. It does not mean that every pharmacy has every strength of every product on the day you walk in.
Localized gaps still happen constantly, and they have perfectly boring causes. A store carries limited quantities of a specific dose. A distributor puts an item on back order. A location sees unusual demand in one week. Someone else filled the last box that morning. A particular strength, say the 7.5 mg pen while the 5 mg is on the shelf, is the one that is missing.
That is what most people actually encounter now. It is not a shortage in the regulatory sense, and treating it as one leads to the wrong response: a panicky search for alternatives when the actual fix is a phone call.
What people commonly do when a gap looks likely
None of the following is medical advice; it is logistics, and it works better than driving around.
- Call ahead instead of showing up. Ask the pharmacy whether they have your medication at your specific strength before you make the trip. Two minutes on the phone replaces an afternoon.
- Ask them to check sister locations or order it in. Most chains can see nearby stock and most pharmacies can order an item for a named date. Neither happens automatically. Both usually happen if you ask.
- Refill earlier in the window rather than on the last day. A few days of slack turns a stockout into an inconvenience rather than a missed dose.
- Tell the prescribing office early. If a gap looks likely, the prescriber wants to know before it becomes a lapse, not after. They have options, and all of those options are theirs to choose.
- Write down the dates. The date you tried to fill, the date you were told to check back, the date you actually got it. These become the facts everyone asks for later.
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The things not to do
Supply anxiety pushes people toward improvisation, and this is the part of the topic where improvisation causes real harm. Three lines are worth drawing clearly.
Do not stretch, split or ration a supply. Spacing doses further apart, splitting a pen, or dropping to a smaller amount to make a box last are all changes to a prescribed regimen. They interact with where you are on a titration ladder, with your tolerance, and with why the dose was set where it was. That makes them prescriber decisions, without exception. If supply is tight, the call to make is to the prescribing office, and it should happen before the improvising would otherwise start.
Do not switch medications on your own. Moving from one GLP-1 to another, or bridging with something else, is a clinical decision involving overlapping half-lives, restarted ladders and a fresh round of side effects. Our guide to switching GLP-1 medications explains what that transition actually involves and why it is planned rather than improvised.
Do not buy from unverified online sellers. The gray market that grew during the shortage era did not disappear when the shortages did, and the risks are the ones we set out in our article on retatrutide: unverified contents, unverified concentration, no pharmacy oversight, and no way to know what is actually in the vial. If your situation genuinely involves compounded medication obtained through a legitimate route, our guide to tracking compounded semaglutide covers the extra care that requires, particularly around units and concentration.
If a gap causes a late or missed dose
Sometimes the logistics fail anyway and a dose lands late or not at all. That is a well-defined situation with published guidance, and it is not an emergency.
The label windows differ by medication. Ozempic can generally be taken within five days of the missed day. Mounjaro and Zepbound have a four-day window. Wegovy depends on how far away the next scheduled dose is, and two or more missed doses is a call to the prescriber because re-titration may be involved. Rybelsus is skipped for the day and never doubled. Our missed dose article sets out each one precisely, and the rule that applies to all of them is the same: never take a double dose to catch up.
If the gap runs longer than the label window, the restart is the prescriber's call. Depending on how long you were without the medication and where you were on the ladder, they may restart at your current step or step back down. That decision needs one input above all others, which brings us to the tracking angle.
Why the log is the useful artifact
The question a prescriber or pharmacist asks in this situation is always some version of: when was your last dose, and how long have you been without it?
People are bad at this from memory, and understandably so. Weekly medications blur together, one week looks like another, and a gap that felt like forever was sometimes eleven days. A dose log answers with a date rather than an impression, and that date is what the restart plan is built on.
GLP 1 Tracker App logs each dose with its date, medication and amount, tracks where you are on your titration ladder, and sends shot-day reminders and overdue alerts. On Premium you can export the history as CSV or JSON if the prescribing office wants it in a portal message. That is the entire claim, and it is deliberately small: the app records what happened. It does not know your pharmacy's stock, it cannot find you a supply, and it will never suggest a dose. Our notes on bringing data to an appointment cover how to use a record like that in the conversation that follows.
The short version
The national GLP-1 shortages of the last few years were declared resolved for tirzepatide in December 2024 and for semaglutide in February 2025, and as of August 2026 the FDA database listed no current shortage for semaglutide, tirzepatide or orforglipron, with liraglutide injection still listed. What remains is ordinary local unavailability, which is handled with phone calls, earlier refills, and an early heads-up to the prescribing office. What is never handled by improvising is the dose itself. Keep the dates, ask the questions, and let the clinician decide what changes.
Frequently asked questions
Is there still an Ozempic or Mounjaro shortage in 2026?
Not nationally. The FDA declared the tirzepatide shortage resolved in December 2024 and the semaglutide shortage resolved in February 2025, and as of a check in August 2026 the FDA drug shortage database listed no current shortage of semaglutide, tirzepatide or orforglipron. Liraglutide injection was still listed as currently in shortage. National status and your pharmacy's shelf are two different things, so a local gap is still entirely possible.
Why can my pharmacy not fill my GLP-1 if the shortage is over?
Because resolved is a statement about national supply, not a guarantee about any one location. Individual pharmacies still run out of specific strengths, distributors still put items on back order, and a particular dose can be unavailable in one store while a branch a few miles away has it. That kind of localized gap is what most people actually encounter now, and it usually resolves with a phone call rather than a change of plan.
Can I stretch my doses if my pharmacy is out?
No, and please do not try. Splitting, stretching or spacing out doses to make a supply last is a change to your prescribed regimen, and changes to a regimen are decisions for your prescriber, who can weigh your titration step, your tolerance and your history. Call the prescribing office and tell them a gap is likely. They deal with this often and have options that do not involve improvising.
What should I do if a supply gap makes me miss a dose?
The missed dose windows in the prescribing information still apply, and they differ by medication. Ozempic can generally be taken within five days of the missed day, Mounjaro and Zepbound within four days, and Wegovy has its own rule based on how far away the next dose is. Never take a double dose to compensate. If the gap runs longer than the label window, contact your prescriber, because restarting may involve re-titration.
How does tracking help during a supply gap?
It gives you exact dates instead of estimates. When a prescriber or pharmacist asks when your last dose was and how long you have been without, a dose log answers in seconds and answers correctly. That matters because the restart plan depends on the actual length of the gap, and reconstructing dates from memory several weeks later is where people get it wrong.