Reaction to Coronavirus, N95 Masks Run Out at Jakarta markets

Last updated on May 6th, 2021 at 06:37 am

Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak centered in Wuhan, China, has prompted Jakartans to buy up masks across the capital. One of the place is at Pramuka Market in Matraman, South Jakarta, where stocks of surgical and N95 masks have started to run out.

the masks were becoming harder to source amid the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. It was confirmed by Aya, one of vendor of medical supplies at the market.

“We started running out of stock when the coronavirus became a hot topic after Chinese New Year,” Aya said on Wednesday (29/1) as quoted by kompas.com.

She added that N95 masks are usually for factory workers so they are supposed to be better than surgical masks. Even the factories are starting to run out of this type of masks.

“We still have our final stock of regular masks. People have bought out the N95 masks, so the rest are buying the regular masks,” she added.

One of customers, named Anton, who was visiting the market on Wednesday, could not find N95 masks. He wanted to buy in bulk quantity of masks to ship it out to Wuhan.

“I have looked everywhere, but most [shops] have run out, including here [at Pramuka]. I need around 100,000 masks to send to Wuhan,” Anton said.

As informed, The 2019-nCoV causes a flu-like severe respiratory ailment. This virus can spread to other people by airborne droplets that an infected person expels when sneezing or coughing.

For now, according to official figures on Thursday (30/1) that 170 people in China had died from the viral disease. Also, more than 7,000 people worldwide had been infected, AFP reported. Meanwhile, Indonesia authorities has confirmed zero cases of 2019-nCoV infection to Jan. 29.