Shortage of IP alcohol hits sanitiser making in T’malai

Revealing this to DT Next, he said, “I was able to get only around 500 litres from Chennai due to an acute shortage of this chemical within the district.” Elaborating further, he said, “Isopropyl alcohol is the main ingredient in hand sanitisers as it constitutes 338.17 ml in the 500 ml proposed. The remaining constituents include distilled water 86.54 ml, glycerol 6.53 ml and hydrogen peroxide 18.76 ml. We now have on hand 500 bottles of our brand Covid wash hand sanitisers each of 450 ml, which will be distributed to hospitals and primary health centres in the district.”

Asked what would happen once the institutions ran out of hand sanitisers, he said “as all districts are now making them we expect the situation to stabilise within a few days.” This could be right as already Vellore and Ranipet districts have plans to market their own hand sanitisers from Monday. Ranipet district sanitiser brand ‘Queen’ comes in 100 ml bottles whose price will be revealed when it hits the market on Monday,” sources revealed.

However, what irked the government officials involved in the anti-coronavirus drive was the blatant hike in prices of the cloth used for making face masks. When officials visited a cloth shop and asked for the price, the response was “what do you need it for?” “This revealed that prices were hiked three times when we told them that it was needed for making face masks. However, it was sold for the normal price when we said it was for domestic or personal use,” Kandasamy said.

Meanwhile, the Red Cross and Rotary Clubs were both permitted by the Vellore district administration to provide food for the homeless and the mentally ill on the streets at their locations during the Janata curfew on Sunday.

Ranipet Collector S Divyadarshini called on the IMA (Indian Medical Association) government and private doctors to undertake a mock drill to check their preparedness to handle COVID-19 on Sunday.