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Coronavirus outbreak: Prices skyrocket for face masks

Face masks intended to keep out the deadly coronavirus aren’t only in short supply, they’re also costing an arm and a leg.

On Amazon, a Novotel medical face mask in a lovely print sells for $27.99, up from $14.99 just 10 days ago. And an AxPower Dust Mask Anti Pollution mask has jumped from $15.99 to an eye-popping $40.99.

Disposal face masks still seem reasonably priced — a box of 100 goes for $30 — but Amazon puts the earliest delivery date in late February.

“We’ll all be dead by then,” quipped one New Yorker.

Shops in the Big Apple sold out of face masks more than a week ago.

“We are totally out of stock of face masks,” Rob Luckman, a manager at Halpern Pharmacy on 23rd Street near Second Avenue, told the Post on Jan. 24.





Many of the pharmacy’s customers were of Chinese descent, Luckman said — buying the supplies for relatives who can’t get them back home, where residents face serious shortages.

One Upper East Side resident who went searching “up and down Lexington Avenue” for a face mask was told time and again that there was at least three-week wait for new supplies to come in.





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Filed under amazon , Coronavirus , health , pharmacy , 2/1/20