Pharmacies across the Capital have seen a huge rush over the last two days with customers queuing up to buy masks and hand sanitisers as measures to protect themselves from COVID-19. Pharmacies across the city have run out of stock of N95 masks and hand sanitisers while many who have stock are selling them at inflated rates.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that the Delhi government had enough stock of N95 masks but added that he would look into reports of them being sold at inflated prices in private shops.

“Almost 90% of the people in a day are either here for sanitisers or masks. They are also emphasising on the 60% alcohol content in sanitisers,” said Jaswinder Pal Singh of Preet Medicos in Khan Market. The signage at the entrance of his shop — ‘No Masks, No sanitisers’ — went unnoticed as visitors poured in to purchase the same. He added that preventive medicines for cold and fever are available on a limited basis.

“The lack of suggested N95 is pushing people to choose from low-quality cloth mask and surgical 3-ply mask which have been declared ineffective to fight the deadly virus. People are not even asking for the price of the masks. Expensive pieces worth ₹2,500 each are getting sold,” said Vishal of Fortis Healthworld here.

Pharmacy owners say that sudden rise in the demand of products is forcing them to sell them at inflated prices, at times even higher than the marked price.

“The earlier sale of sanitiser was one bottle in two days. Yesterday, I sold 30 bottles in less than an hour and turned away almost 30 people because we weren’t able to get it from the distributor,” said Satish Singh Chauhan of Sri Ram Medicos at Kotla market.

“I had placed an order for 1 lakh bottles of sanitisers and have received only 100. Everything is being sold at a higher price than usual,” said Ajay Mittal of a pharmaceutical distributor shop, Durga Pharma in Chandni Chowk.