Coronavirus Impact: Hand Sanitizers Price Hiked By 100% As Supplies Vanish; Is This Blackmarketing?

The hand sanitizer makers have seen up to 10-fold jump in demand, thanks to the number of coronavirus cases rise in India.

As per the reports, the companies have increased the production amid reports of non-availability of hand sanitizers in the market.

Since people have started buying them after cases of coronavirus appeared in the national capital region.

What Does The Manufacturer Say?

While talking about the subject, the Himalaya Drug Company CEO Philipe Haydon said “We have seen a 10 times demand for hand sanitizers over the last month,”.

“We are ramping up our production line to cater to the demand of sanitizers and handwashes nationwide that can help people take precautionary measures. We launched awareness drives on hand hygiene in the year 2000,” he added.

Where Did Hand Sanitizers And Face Mask Disappeared?

In the meantime, hand sanitizers and face masks vanished from chemist shops in many areas of the national capital and adjoining towns as people resorted to panic buying amid the coronavirus outbreak. 

So far, many chemist shops in several localities have run out of stock and manufacturers have not replenished the stock as demand took a sudden spike in the past couple of days.

While some chemist shops that have stocks available for masks have also jacked up prices, selling items that were available earlier for Rs 150 at Rs 300.

While talking about the situation, a salesperson from Delhi said “There was steady demand of hand sanitizers and masks in the past two months since the outbreak of coronavirus but ever since a case was reported in Delhi, there has been a sudden spike in demand,”.

How Is This Affecting?

Basically, the commonly used hand sanitizers of brands like Dettol and Himalaya are not available on the shelves of many of the chemists.

However, some of them have few stocks remaining of medical hand rubs, which come at bottles of different sizes with prices ranging from Rs 200 to Rs 600.

Another salesperson at a different chemist shop said “We are not getting supplies of those brands and we are running out of stock of what we have, as demand has been huge in the last two days,”.

Another chemists added that there is “obviously panic buying” but it is not a case of these items being big available at all in the market.

He said, “We just ran out of stock of hand sanitizers, if you wait for a couple of hours, we would definitely give you (the items),”.

The chemist said, “When there is so much demand, what else do we do?”

when confronted about, why a mask that was earlier sold for Rs 150 is being quoted at Rs 300.

What Is The Solution?

If you are running out of supplies of hand sanitizer,  make your own as instruction given here.

With just a pinch, could homemade hand sanitizer do the job? Possibly, but you have to use the right recipe, experts say.

Basically, the alcohol in hand sanitizers lends those products their microbe-busting power, and the CDC recommends that sanitizers contain 60% to 95% alcohol in order to eradicate germs.

 According to CNN, Handmade hand sanitizers can also curb microbe exposure — but only as long as they have the correct ratio of alcohol to other ingredients.