Coronavirus: Northampton eBayer selling £1.49 hand gel for £40

A Northampton eBay seller is trying to cash in on the coronavirus outbreak by flogging a £1.49 bottle of hand sanitiser... for FORTY QUID.

Supermarket shelves emptied of anti-bacterial soap across the county following health officials advice to keep hands clean in a bid to stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus.

High Street store Savers – which has branches in Northampton, Kettering and Corby – regularly sell a 400ml bottle of Medex hand sanitiser for £1.49.

But their website says they are out of stock.

Yet eBay user joaofrade07, a regular eBayer since 2016 whose location is listed as Northampton, has a bottle and he will let you have it for £40 – with free post and packing! That is an eye-watering 2,500 per cent mark up.

Last week we revealed how visitors to Northampton General Hospital have stolen NHS bottles of hand sanitisers from near patients' beds and three dispensers were ripped wholesale off walls.

A hopsital spokesman said: "Over the past few days we’ve seen a marked increase in the number of hand gel dispensers being taken from our ward areas, including those at the end of our patients’ beds.

"Three dispensers have been ripped from walls around the site, and we’ve seen people coming to the site to fill up their dispensers from our supplies.

"We don’t have an unlimited supply and would ask that visitors to the site respect the fact that we are doing all we can to keep our patients, visitors and staff safe, and we need their support. Hand washing is the most effective way to minimise the risk of infection."

Some stores are now placing restrictions on certain items after a fresh wave of panic buying over the weekend left shelves bare of necessities.

Antibacterial hand soap, soup, dried pasta, and long life milk, are some of the products customers are stockpiling due to paranoia around the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

Public Health England urged people to "think ahead" as cases of Covid-19 rise, but some shoppers took this to mean stockpile essentials.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday appealed for calm saying: "I think it is very, very important that people should behave responsibly and think about others.

And the government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance insisted: “there is absolutely no reason to be doing any panic buying of any sort, or going out and keeping large supplies of things.”

Public Health officials confirmed on Sunday that four people in Northamptonshire have tested positive for Covid-19, all after recently travelling to Northern Italy where the outbreak has been most severe.

Two members of the same immediate family were diagnosed last week followed two more on Sunday, from a different family to the first.