Demand for face masks spikes in B.C., creating supply problems
Credit to Author: Harrison Mooney| Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2020 02:03:54 +0000
Face masks began flying off the shelves Tuesday in Metro Vancouver, as residents rushed to industrial supply stores, plumbing wholesalers and other retailers following news of B.C.’s first confirmed case of coronavirus.
Health officials insisted that the risk of the virus spreading remains low, and others insisted the masks had no proven benefit.
But, by midday, N95 particulate respirators were sold out at stores all over the region, a secondary market for the protective devices was growing quickly online, and increased demand for face masks in British Columbia was being felt as far south as San Francisco.
A Craigslist search for the N95 mask on Tuesday evening yielded nearly 100 listings — almost all of which went up earlier that day. Some sellers were asking as much as $250 for a box of 20, and as supplies dwindle, those prices will only go up.
“What happens in panic situations (is) people hoard,” said Wendover Brown, the founder of Vogmasks, a California company that sells designer particular respirators. “Instead of getting one, they get two. Instead of getting five, they get ten.”
A traveller wearing a mask, sits at Vancouver International Airport (YVR) as Canada’s Public Health Agency added a screening question for visitors and began displaying messages in several airports urging travellers to report flu-like symptoms in efforts to prevent any introduction of coronavirus, in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada January 24, 2020. REUTERS/Jennifer Gauthier
Vogmasks began selling hand-sewn masks with eye-catching patterns eight years ago, generally for dusty desert events like Burning Man. But the San Francisco-based outfit was forced to shut down all orders late last week to keep up with a sudden surge in demand for their product.
The company resumed taking orders at noon Pacific time as planned, but this was just moments after British Columbians learned that a man in his 40s was believed to have contracted the coronavirus after a business trip to the Chinese city of Wuhan. Vogmasks was immediately overwhelmed with Canadian orders, including approximately 100 from B.C. in just a few hours.
“Basically we’ve been in a panic situation since Thursday,” Brown said. “We suspended — paused — sales on our site until noon (Tuesday) because we had so many orders over the weekend that we wanted our fulfilment to catch up. … This was a big mistake. We resumed order-taking at noon today. So far, we have had hundreds of orders. It’s terrible.”
Vogmasks and other mask manufacturers were already behind: This new outbreak follows several other recent incidents that saw an increase in global demand for particulate respirators.
“We’ve never had this in eight and a half years, and it’s in the same month as the Australian bushfires — we had so many orders, we couldn’t keep my resellers stocked, and then a volcano in the Philippines, which was two weeks ago, and now we had no idea that this was what we were running into next.”
Digital signage located in the International arrivals hall at Vancouer International Airport.
Making matters worse: the company just lost their B.C.-based distributor, who left Vogmasks at the end of last month to pursue other projects, Brown said, “and two weeks later, here we are, three weeks later, with panic-buying on a level that we’ve never encountered.”
Brown said a particulate respirator alone cannot be the sole preventive measure, and urged good handwashing practices, but nevertheless expressed dismay that her company couldn’t produce enough masks to meet rising demand.
“It feels practically immoral to run out of supply because (people) depend on our product,” she said. But it’s a hand-sewn product, so it’s not like pressing a button on a machine and putting out a million particulate respirators per month. It’s just not that sort of product.”
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