Jharkhand is faced against acute shortage of protective masks, while negligible pieces are left with retailers and whole sellers, officials of the State Drugs Control Directorate learnt in a meeting with suppliers and retailers of surgical masks on Monday in Ranchi.
The Directorate called for a meeting with various stakeholders involved in manufacture, supply and sales of sanitizers and protective masks in a bid to get a clear picture on the status of the two commodities – recently included in Essential Commodities Act by the Government of India amid Coronavirus fear.
While suppliers, during the meeting, assured to provide around 10,000 bottles of sanitizers, the Directorate could not get assurance of more than 200 masks by the stakeholders. “Masks do not come under the purview of the drug control directorate, but we will be able to control their supply as they are mostly sold by medicine stores,” said Drug Director Ritu Sahay.
The State governments can carry out operations against order speculators and those involved in black marketing of sanitizers and masks, officials from the Drug Control Directorate said. Offenders may be punished with an imprisonment of seven years or fine or both, they added.
While the virus has claimed over 5000 lives across the globe, primarily in Italy and China, it has affected more than 80 people in India and caused two deaths. No cases of Coronavirus have been reported in Jharkhand so far. However, nearly 100 people here are under observation after returning from countries affected by the virus. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared Coronavirus a global pandemic. The demand for hand sanitizers and surgical masks skyrocketed since Coronavirus entered India through Kerala earlier this year. In Ranchi, N95 masks disappeared from medicine stores and even hospitals. Shopkeepers said that there was no supply of masks in Jharkhand. Since the demand for N95 masks was high in Delhi, the manufacturers could not supply masks to Ranchi, they added.
According to the official website of the World Health Organisation (WHO), on December 31, WHO was alerted to several cases of pneumonia in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. The virus did not match any other known virus. This raised concern because when a virus is new, it is not known how it may affect people, One week later, on January 7, Chinese authorities confirmed that they had identified a new virus. The new virus is a coronavirus, which is a family of viruses that include the common cold, and viruses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). This new virus was temporarily named 2019-nCoV.