The European Union's drug regulator needs to do more to tackle shortages of some widely-used antibiotics in the region, according to a letter from a group of European patient and consumer organisations reviewed by Reuters on Tuesday.

The letter to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) comes as antibiotics, including amoxicillin - used to treat bacterial infections and often prescribed for ear and chest infections in children - have been in short supply since October.

The letter said measures like substituting amoxicillin with other antibiotics have squeezed supply of some other drugs and that the current steps in place to deal with the shortages have not contained the crisis.

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There has been a spike in demand for certain drugs linked to the resurgence of respiratory infections after two years of COVID restrictions, which has put additional pressure on global supplies. Drugmakers had also cut output when demand dipped at the height of the pandemic.

But the letter highlights growing concerns about prolonged shortages in the region even as the winter comes too an end.

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"The main root cause declared by producers is an insufficient production capacity to face the surge in demand," the letter signed by 11 organisations, including the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) and the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) said.

The consortium asked the EMA to declare the current antibiotic shortage a "major event", which would mean the regulator could coordinate action to address the shortfalls at a pan-European level and increase the reporting obligations of manufacturers.

The EMA and the European Commission did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

In an interview with Reuters on Jan. 13, EMA chief medical officer Steffen Thirstrup told Reuters that the agency was monitoring the situation but did not believe it should be classified as a major event at that time.

The EMA and the Commission also said in a joint statement last week they had been monitoring the situation and had been engaging with players in the drug supply chain to increase production capacity.

CNN and other major media outlets are being criticized for making the Antifa attacks in Atlanta appear insignificant, which a former member explains is actually beneficial for Antifa.

Former Antifa member Gabriel Nadales joined "Jesse Watters Primetime" to dig into the media's downplayed response to the Antifa attack in Atlanta and share his insight on the overarching goal of the group.

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"Of course it's good for Antifa. You know, I can always count on CNN to act as a professional PR team to excuse Antifa violence, because time and time again they'll say, oh, Antifa is just an idea. It's just an ideology. It's not real. And then when they get caught and you see Antifa on the street, it wasn't that violent. Or sometimes they even say they're the good guys," he explained.

The mainstream media has been downplaying the anarchy and violence caused by Antifa for years because, according to Nadales, the media does not want to admit to this destruction because they "don't want to fight Antifa."

"They don't want to say it because they really don't want to fight Antifa. Because to fight Antifa would be to admit that they were lying for five, six years now. When they first praised Antifa back in 2015, when president, when candidate Trump first announced that office," said Nadales.

Nadales goes on to explain how the primary goals vary from group to group, but the overriding ideology is a dramatic hatred for American and Western ideals. The group is against Democrats and Republicans equally, and promotes and backs an anti-American movement altogether.

"There is always this overarching like anti-fascism. But you have to ask yourself, what does anti-fascism mean? Well, when they define it, they don't mean Nazis, they don't mean KKK, they mean basically Western ideals as well as democracy itself. They don't like the Democratic Party. They don't like the Republican Party. They want to destroy America," Nadales explained.

Nadales questions the media's relaxed narrative onf the myriad of Antifa attacks, speculating that "you would think that CNN or other mainstream outlets would be united with all other Americans against Antifa because Antifa is an anti-American movement."

"For some reason they just want to excuse it, pretend it doesn't exist. But let me tell you, the longer we don't acknowledge the threat of Antifa, the more they will grow and the harder it will be to fight them," warns Nadales, who was ostracized by his group for having the "audacity" so go explore other ideas.

"They just called me a capitalist pig, and it was a repeated cycle of any time I tried to venture out of like of this sticker type ideology," he said. After being routinely pushed out for expressing other ideas, Nadales elected to leave the group, having "had enough."