Rite Aid announces 27 more store closures as total in a year hits 500 - is YOUR local pharmacy affected?

Another 27 Rite Aid stores will close as part of the retailer's ongoing bid to turn its finances around.

News of the closures by one of the nation's biggest drugstore chains came in a court filing on Monday.

The 15 to shutter in Ohio and a further 12 in Michigan bring the total to 511 since it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October. Scroll down for the address of the 27. 

Customers took the news badly. 'I was really upset because I come here quite often. It's so convenient for me, and I'm just upset about it,' Carol Deluca told ABC News. 

She gets her prescriptions from one of the Rite Aid on Navarre Avenue in Oregon in Ohio, which is slated to close.

The chain has been facing a series of challenges. Drugstores, generally, are struggling in the face of competition from Amazon, and big-box chains like Walmart and Target. 

Rite Aid will shut a further 27 stores nationwide as part of its bankruptcy restructuring

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Details of the 77 Rite Aid closures announced earlier this year

In addition, Rite Aid has also been unable to settle hundreds of lawsuits which have accused the company of overprescribing opioids.  

The pharmacy giant - a Philadelphia-based chain founded in Pennsylvania in 1968 as the Thrift D Discount Center - filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October.

At the time, it said that it would shut 154 of its 2,100 stores in at least 15 states. 

Since then it has announced more closures across 21 states, including California, Pennsylvania, New York and Texas, in a string of court filings.

Over the rest of 2023, the drugstore chain announced a further 200 would be shuttered.  

Then across seven court filings in January and February it outlined a further 77. Then in April, it said it would shutter 53 more across nine states. 

With the 27 this week, that takes the total since the bankruptcy filing to 511.

The company faces more than $3.3 billion in debt, and over a thousand federal lawsuits over its alleged role in the opioid epidemic.

Last year, Rite Aid forecast it would generate approximately $650 million in losses for 2024.

Rite Aid's chief financial officer Matthew Schroeder said: 'We're constantly looking at performance of stores, particularly ones that don't have much lease life left on the lease and determining whether we've got an opportunity to continue to maximize the profitability and the efficiency of the fleet.

'I would expect us to continue to do that.'

Rite Aid has said it will shutter more than 500 stores as it navigates Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings

Rite Aid is not the only drugstore closing down locations across the country.

CVS is set to close the doors on 900 of its stores by the end of 2024, 10 percent of all its shops, as part of their online strategy.

Walgreens will also shutter 150 stores by next summer, citing slashed earnings due to plummeting demand for Covid-19 vaccines and tests.

'According to our estimates, about one in four neighborhoods are pharmacy deserts across the country,' Dima Qato, an associate professor at the University of Southern California, told The Washington Post.

'These closures are disproportionately affecting communities that need pharmacies most.'