Several pharmacies and general stores from several corners around the city and even outlets of supershops such as Shwapno, Unimart, Meena Bazar, to name a few, where the supply of these essentials found adequately stocked till Saturday – suddenly started to see a rush of buyers after the news of COVID-19 confirmation started floating around everywhere in the city on Sunday.
“We had 3 bottles of 50 ml Sepnil (Square Toiletries) sanitizers in our shop stocked from last month, and all 3 of those were immediately sold within minutes of the confirmation news went on television”, Swapan, a salesperson of a departmental store in Mohammadpur, told UNB.
At the Dhanmondi outlet of Unimart, printed notices are seen on Monday containing the request to the customers not to buy more than one bottle of hand sanitizers and three packets/bottles of liquid hand washes, which many of the customers welcomed.
“If there was no such boundary to the buyers, everyone would try to buy all the products alone. It would not be wise considering the virus could be prevented if everyone can have these essentials, so this instruction should be welcomed”, Nazma, a customer at Unimart spoke on the instruction to UNB.
Salespersons at Unimart Dhanmondi told UNB that in order to support as many customers as possible, the shop has applied a limit of 1 piece of hand sanitizer and 3 pieces of hand washing liquids to per customer.
From Sunday afternoon, people around all the corners of the city started sharing posts on social media platforms regarding the unavailability of these products. One of them, Mim, told UNB that she even searched at the Mitford market on Monday morning but did not found hand sanitizers in any shop.
World Health Organization (WHO) instructed to wash hands with soap and water or to use alcohol-based hand rubs/sanitizers, as hands touch many surfaces and can pick up viruses. Once contaminated, hands can transfer the virus to eyes, nose or mouth, from where the virus can enter into the body and can make one affected with the virus.