Cleanlink News October 8 2009
H1N1 Scare Spikes Hand Sanitizer Demand
Swine-flu-wary consumers are taking prevention measures into their own hands. The result: shortages of hand-sanitization solutions.
"Everyone who is a Purell distributor is on an allocation basis," Brian Calvey, president of American Janitor and Paper Supply Inc. in Scranton, said of the popular sanitizer. "It's probably in the area of 10 to 25 percent of what our needs currently are, but our needs are 200 percent of what it would normally be."
The company, which sells cleaning and hygiene supplies to institutional and commercial customers, is seeking alternate products to replace dwindling supplies of Purell, Mr. Calvey said.
"People are in a panic mode," he said.
As nervous consumers stock up on products in an effort to ward off the spread of the H1N1 virus, a local physician says practical measures provide the best defense.
"Hand sanitizer is not a replacement for hand-washing," said Stephen Pancoast, M.D., an infectious disease epidemiologist at Scranton's hospitals. "Soap and water is not in short supply. I would tell the public to go back to old-fashioned hand-washing."
Public awareness of the H1N1 threat, though, is generating big orders for producers of sanitizers and other germ-battling products.
"We have accelerated production to meet the increase in demand," said Lori Dolginoff, a spokeswoman for Johnson & Johnson, the New Jersey-based health-care products giant that markets Purell. She declined to discuss supply issues.
Cintas First Aid and Safety, a Jenkins Twp. distributor of health and medical supplies, is running low on hand-sanitizing foam, which is popular in hospitals and medical facilities.
"We can't get it for six to eight weeks," sales manager Joe Delfino said. "When flu season hits, in mid-November to late November, this stuff is going be a lot more scarce than it is now."
Rite-Aid Corp., which is based in Camp Hill and has 4,800 stores nationwide, has seen sales jump for hand sanitizers increase, along with face masks and some cleansing products, including antibacterial sprays - such as Lysol - and disinfecting wipes, spokeswoman Ashley Flower said.
The best protection from swine flu, Dr. Pancoast said, is avoiding crowded settings and sick people. But stocking up on sanitizers, masks and disinfectants is a reasonable precaution, he said.
"There's all sorts of personal magical thinking that goes into it, especially with the uncertainty we are facing," Dr. Pancoast said. "Cleanliness is the human response to anything that is communicable."
As reported by www.citizensvoice.com.
