BACOLOD City – The alarm of terror brought by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) have led to a scarce supply of facemasks in drugstores and other similar distributors here.
According to a Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)-Negros Occidental, the supply started depleting on Jan. 30 based on their monitoring and until Feb. 1, pharmacies were still posting signs in their stores that they have ran out of facemasks.
Romel Amihan, head of the Consumer Protection Unit (CPU), said that they are keeping an eye on pharmacies and hardware stores that sell facemasks, along with other establishments that sell sanitizers.
He said that their teams have observed
that the supply of the facemasks have been running low even before the virus
scare, and there are, unfortunately, no current stocks of N95 masks in the
province.
“We actually started monitoring since the eruption of Taal Volcano in Luzon.
Since then, most pharmacies in the city and other localities in the province
were not able to replenish their supply of facemask from their respective
suppliers in Manila,” he added.
However, he disagreed that there had been a panic buying of facemasks. Rather, the supplies came limited after the demands increased due to the eruption of the Taal Volcano last month.
Amihan also said that DTI-Negros has
issued a warning to retailers of facemasks and sanitizers to hold back
overpricing the products. Anything that will be sold at least 10 percent higher
than the Suggested Retail Price (SRP) will be charged for profiteering.
“An ordinary and disposable facemask can be sold at PHP3 to PHP5 only,” he
said.(With a report from PNA/PN)
