Matthew Medland has been selling hand sanitizer in Ontario for about 12 years but has never seen sales spike as much as they have since the outbreak of SARS a month ago.
It helped that the Ontario Ministry of Health recently bought up all the bottles of sanitizer it could get its hands on -- from Mr. Medland's company and competitors -- to keep hospitals and other health care centres well stocked, Mr. Medland said.
In less than one week, his sales of the Purell hand sanitizer, made by GOJO Industries Inc., were 16 times their normal volume, said Mr. Medland, GOJO's Ontario sales representative.
Along with the massive Health Ministry order, some companies and schools are ordering the hand sanitizer -- or are considering it -- after health authorities urged people to wash their hands regularly with a sanitizer or soap and water to try to prevent SARS, he said yesterday.
"All of a sudden we're taking a look and finding that people are interested in hygiene," Mr. Medland said from his home office, with barely time to talk to a reporter because of his stepped-up business.
"It's just unfortunate that it has to be fuelled by something so potentially frightening."
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is driving business in a few areas that don't usually get much attention, including face masks and hand sanitizer, an alcohol-based cleaner that doesn't require rinsing off with water.
Some business executives acknowledged they didn't even know what a hand sanitizer was until the SARS outbreak, which has hit the Toronto area most severely in Canada.
Now some of these officials are seriously looking into supplying their employees with a bottle of sanitizer at their desk, as The Globe and Mail did this week.
And the worries about SARS don't seem to be abating: Yesterday, the World Health Organization warned against travelling to Toronto because of the SARS situation, raising the stakes in the battle against the potentially deadly disease.
Wal-Mart Canada Corp., the giant discount retailer, has seen sales of the sanitizer more than quadruple since the SARS scare hit about a month ago, said spokesman Andrew Pelletier.
Now the retailer, which employs about 57,000, is considering handing out the sanitizer to its own employees, Mr. Pelletier said.
"We are a company and an employer that always errs on the side of caution when it comes to the health and safety of our associates and customers so we are obviously reviewing and considering various precautions in the interest of safety," he said.
One Wal-Mart store recently posted a sign restricting purchases of Purell to two bottles per customer, but Mr. Pelletier said generally the retailer has been able to meet the heavy demand for the product. It sells for $4.87 for a 236-millilitre bottle and $1.97 for a small 59-ml container.
One of the biggest sanitizer customers has been the Ontario Health Ministry, which purchased 199,000 regular size bottles for hospitals and other health care centres -- and is still looking for more, said ministry spokesman John Letherby.
"The ministry has been very active in purchasing or getting ahold of as much of the sanitization cleaner as possible to benefit its public health facilities across the province," he said.
Meanwhile, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. recently supplied all employees at its main prize office in Toronto with the sanitizer to protect against SARS, spokesman Jim Cronin said.
And ABC Group Inc., a Toronto-based auto parts supplier, is also providing the product for employees in its plants and offices as a way to ensure proper hygiene in the workplace, said Irene Gohm, ABC's director of human resources.
Even some schools are stocking up on sanitizer, although so far in Toronto it has been an individual school decision.