On Monday afternoon, as Madhuri Jethi and her friends waited for customers at their vegetable stalls in Mumbai’s Bandra suburb, one topic d...
On Monday afternoon, as Madhuri Jethi and her friends waited for customers at their vegetable stalls in Mumbai’s Bandra suburb, one topic dominated their conversation: the difficulty of finding hand sanitisers and face masks in medical stores around the city.
“The school that my grandchildren go to has told them they have to carry these masks and sanitisers, but they are not available anywhere,” said Jethi, a middle-aged hawker who had never heard of sanitisers before the global outbreak of the novel coronavirus took over Indian news. Her grandsons study in a Catholic school in the neighbourhood, and Jethi claims her son and daughter-in-law had to scout through at least a dozen chemist stores for three days before they managed to buy simple masks. “But they have not been able to find sanitisers yet.”
In the past 12 days, coronavirus – officially known as Covid-19 – has infected at least 60 people in India, with cases being reported from Kerala, Delhi, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. Globally, it has spread to over 60 countries, infecting 1.1 lakh people and killing over 4,000.
Panic about the spread of coronavirus has triggered a sharp spike in demand for protective gear like face masks and sanitisers in countries around...
