Virus buying blitz - COVID-19 threat drives demand for cleaning agents, masks, other supplies
Published:Saturday | March 7, 2020 | 12:00 AMAndre Williams/Staff Reporter
Several Jamaican suppliers of cleaning agents and protective gear are reporting shortages or depleted stock of N95 dust mask as the heightened threat of the global novel coronavirus has caused buyers to be stocking up.
The Gleaner understands that in recent days, there has been an increase demand for sanitisers and latex gloves, too.
Antoinette Blake, purchasing officer at Chemical and Construction International (1858) Limited, said her company had seen high demand for cleaning agents.
“We have received orders we can’t even fill. The N95 dust masks, we can’t fill those because none is available,” Blake told The Gleaner.
“Sanitisers and cleaning detergents we do manufacture those. We are also running out of raw materials for the sanitisers.”
BEWI Trading Quality Cleaning products, a family-owned and -operated business on Red Hills Road, St Andrew, told our news team that customers were stocking up in unusually high volumes, perhaps hoarding items.
“Customers are not buying the regular, they are buying more than what they usually do in case there is a shortage,” said Duralah Reid of BEWI Trading. “They are buying body wash and soap and there are persons buying alcohol.”
Despite the increase in demand, BEWI said it had not increased its prices.
BUYING BINGE
Minott Equipment and Chemicals Limited has also run out of N95 dust masks.
Tameka Notice, company receptionist who commissions all the calls and orders from customers, said that there has been a buying blitz for a range of items.
“They are vigilant because we are almost out of everything – hand sanitisers, Lysol wipes, Lysol sprays, gloves, and we are out of N95 masks,” Notice told The Gleaner.
Marwel Trading has also reported that its shelves have been cleaned out in a buying binge amid fears of an outbreak of COVID-19. The company said there has been a rush on hand sanitisers and gloves and it was completely out of N95 dust masks.
Consumer Affairs Commission (CAC) Chief Executive Officer Dolsie Allen said that the watchdog had deployed field monitors who would be gauging customer feedback and supply trends on the ground in the coming weeks. The CAC has consulted with ministry officials and key personnel and confirmed that there had been no credible reports of price gouging.
“No formal reports have come in to the commission, but we have been hearing anecdotal things really, people just saying things, but we don’t have the data to support that,” Allen told The Gleaner yesterday.
DON’T PANIC
Hoarding of cleaning products and safety gear is emblematic of the panic that Prime Minister Andrew Holness warned against on Wednesday when he convened a meeting of national stakeholders on the country’s readiness for COVID-19.
Holness, who is chairman of the National Disaster Risk Management Council, sought to calm fears by declaring that the Government had a comprehensive plan in place to tackle the novel coronavirus.
“There is always a level of planning, there is always a level of response. The plan calls for the maintenance of not just plans for protocols or responses, but it calls for the maintenance of supplies and stocks and having systems in good order,” the prime minister said.
“I am told that we would be certainly above what is the minimum requirement for our response. I am not here saying that we are at the optimum, but certainly we are above what is the minimum required,” he added.
Opposition Spokesman on Health, Dr Morais Guy, has warned commercial interests to desist from price-gouging.
“With the possibility of coronavirus hitting our shores, we’ve been told that retailers have been taking essential things such as hand sanitisers, gloves and masks off the shelves, repricing them at an exorbitant price, and putting them out.
“This, we feel, is not part of the national effort that should be done as we are concerned that there are some who are capitalising on the potential for illness,” Guy added.