It’s not just hand sanitizers and medical masks that are flying off U.S. shelves as the coronavirus outbreak spreads. Shoppers are also stocking up on surprising items — like oat milk.
Stocks opened sharply lower on Wall Street, erasing 2% from major indexes, as the mood swings back to fear.
The West Coast, where the U.S. outbreak is so far centered, has led the spike in medical mask sales, Nielsen found. Drugstores in the Los Angeles metropolitan area posted year-to-date dollar growth of 340%, while the San Francisco area saw a 541% increase compared with this time last year. But buying has shifted to products that keep people healthy too: U.S. sales of aerosol disinfectants were up 19% in the week ended Feb. 22. Sales of supplements rose 7.8%.
“Online suppliers have reacted very, very quickly by offering store owners, for example, mobile applications for sourcing orders,” Ryan Zhou, vice president for consumer packaged goods for Nielsen China, said in the note. “So online has really helped suppliers react and adjust their supply systems in ways that didn’t exist during SARS.”
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