A Buffalo-area team is working to win approval from the E.P.A. for a retail version of a disinfectant.

A concentrated disinfectant made by one of the firms involved was added by the E.P.A. this month to the list of products that could be marketed to kill germs in the coronavirus family. The company linked up with Joe Mallare, who co-owns a company that makes melamine sponges, to try to sell a diluted version to individual customers. But the E.P.A. informed the team on Thursday that they would need to submit a new application, rather than an amendment to their existing registration for the concentrated blend, which is sold to institutional customers.

Mr. Mallare said his team is still committed to winning approval, and called the E.P.A. “very understanding and helpful,” including engaging in midnight email exchanges about the application process. “With this virus going, everybody in America needs this,” he said of his team’s product.

Mr. Mallare is being assisted by a pair of Republican operatives, David Ferguson and Peggy J. Ellis. They have enlisted support for the effort from members of Congress and helped Mr. Mallare’s team connect with the appropriate officials in the E.P.A.’s Antimicrobials Division.

Mr. Ferguson, who specializes in conservative issue advocacy and is not a registered federal lobbyist, said “we’re just trying to use our connections to do what’s right for the country in a time of national crisis.” He said he’s doing the work on a volunteer basis, adding “this is not my core business, and now is not a time for making money.”

For plenty of other Washington veterans, coronavirus is, indeed, a time for making money.

Mike Gula, a veteran Republican fund-raiser whose firm has been paid more than $36 million since 2008 by a range of top Republican politicians and political committees, sent an email on Thursday to clients announcing that he was leaving political fund-raising to focus his “full attention” on “another business outside politics.”

That business is a newly incorporated firm called Blue Flame Medical that boasts on its website that it has assembled an array of “hard-to-find medical supplies to beat the outbreak,” including respirator & surgical masks, coronavirus test kits “and a wide selection” of personal protective equipment.