Coronavirus: Profiteers using the Covid-19 outbreak to sell hand gel on eBay for £239 a litre Online retailers are working to crack down on profiteers trying to cash in on people’s concerns about coronavirus

Profiteers are using the Covid-19 outbreak to cash in on people’s concerns about catching the virus, leading to Amazon removing “bad actors”from its site and major pharmacies limiting supplies of hand sanitiser.

Amazon said it had removed “tens of thousands” of listings from its sites around the world, saying there was “no place for price gouging” as staff were constantly monitoring listings.

Boots has seen an increase in hand sanitiser sales, with a source saying there were concerns people were selling it online, but it still has stock available in its warehouses. Boots and Lloyds Pharmacy have limited hand sanitisers to two per customer.

The i newsletter cut through the noise Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription.

“We know that having access to products like hand gels is extremely important to our customers, so we are doing everything we can to ensure availability, despite increasing demand and supply challenges,” a spokesman for Lloyds said.

Amazon condemns ‘price gouging’

i found one seller on Amazon UK offering 24 x 60ml bottles of hand sanitiser for £169 – an eye-watering £117 per litre. Another was selling 10 x 50ml bottles for just over £52 – or £104 a litre.

A pack of 12 anti-bacterial wet-wipe canisters, each containing 40 wipes and promising to “kill 99.9 percent of germs”, was also on offer for just over £330, while a box containing 8,000 wipes with a “powerful santising formula” was also being sold for £160.

A single 50ml bottle of hand gel was also being sold on eBay for £11.99 – or £239.80 a litre. It had been viewed 300 times in the previous hour and was being offered “while stocks last from UK stock”.

When i checked the seller’s details, it turned out to be a car sales garage in Manchester.

The price later changed to £5, with no bottles left for sale after 439 were sold. More than a dozen were sold in just one hour on Wednesday afternoon.

The same seller was also offering 250ml bottles of antibacterial soap for £10.98 a pair – a product normally sold at Boots for £1.

The World Health Organisation has warned that disruption to the global supply of masks, respirators, gloves and other personal protective equipment is putting lives at risk.

‘The risk to healthcare workers is real’

The agency blamed the shortage on rising demand due to panic buying, hoarding and misuse, and it called for a 40 percent increase in production. Physicians, nurses and other frontline workers are “dangerously ill-equipped” to care for Covid-19 patients, it said.

“Without secure supply chains, the risk to health care workers around the world is real,“ WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

”Industry and governments must act quickly to boost supply, ease export restrictions and put measures in place to stop speculation and hoarding.“