Tokyo: Thieves in Japan have made off with some 6,000 surgical masks from a hospital, with the country facing a mass shortage and a huge price hike online due to the coronavirus.
Four boxes containing the face masks disappeared from a locked storage facility at the Japanese Red Cross hospital in the western port city of Kobe, a hospital official said Tuesday.
“We still have a large number of masks – enough to continue our daily operations at the hospital, but this is so deplorable,” the official told this agency.
Police have launched an investigation as they suspect the thieves intend to resell the masks. The demand for masks has increased in Japan as the number of coronavirus affected people has gone up. Masks have been sold out at many drug and discount stores across the nation. Public anxiety has been also fuelled by headlines of hundreds of people infected with the virus on board a ship quarantined off Japan.
The theft came after knife-wielding men jumped a delivery driver and stole hundreds of toilet rolls Monday in Hong Kong, where the coronavirus outbreak has fuelled a run on face masks, hand sanitiser and toilet paper.
Japanese flea market app ‘Mercari’ called on its users to trade masks ‘within socially accepted limits’ after a box of 65 masks was priced at more than 50,000 yen (USD 456) at its online marketplace.
The Japanese government has ‘strongly requested’ mask makers to boost output, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters last week.
There has been a shortage of masks at drug stores in the hygiene-conscious nation where face masks have been part of everyday street-wear for decades.
Agencies