Hand sanitizers and medical masks have almost disappeared from pharmaceutical stores in the steel city, thanks to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“Sanitizers are out of stock at my shop since the past two days,” said Yogesh Raja, owner of Prince Medical, a large store in Bistupur. “I had placed an order for an adequate number in view of the demand but there is no chance of a fresh stock till Thursday.”

He said he had on Saturday asked for 100 pieces of sanitizers but got only 30 pieces which sold off fast.

“At 1pm today (Tuesday), I somehow managed to bring 50 pieces of small-size sanitizers, 100ml ones. By 6pm only five pieces were left unsold,” said another shop owner, Gurucharan Singh of Savita Medicals.

Singh said that he had kept N-95 masks, the kind that can protect against COVID-19, but the stock of has exhausted.

He said that some people turned up at his shop trying to sell him a “Herbal Home-made Sanitizer”.

“But I did not keep them for sale as neither there was any name of a manufacturing company nor registration number. Obviously, this type of sanitizer was spurious,” Singh said.

There are around 1,200 medical stores across East Singhbhum district and roughly 1,000 in the steel city.

Kamal Agrawal, secretary of East Singhbhum Chemists and Druggist Association, admitted that there was a crisis of sanitizers.

“But there will be no crisis in the next few days as several companies engaged in manufacturing pharmaceutical medicines have switched over to making sanitizers keeping in view the demand after the coronavirus threat,” said Agrawal.

East Singhbhum district civil surgeon Dr Maheswar Prasad said a sanitizer must contain a minimum of 70 per cent alcohol in it to kill the novel coronavirus.

“There may be several types of sanitizers, but the one which has minimum 70 per cent of alcohol should be used for prevention from the coronavirus,” Dr Prasad told The Telegraph.

The Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee (JNAC) has started teaching people how to make sanitizers at home.

“Boiling clove in water and adding camphor it makes a good sanitizer,” JNAC city manager Ravi Bharti said at a function organised on the civic body premises in Sakchi on Tuesday.

“People can use such solution by preparing it at home if sanitizers are out of stock in the market.”