Following a sudden surge in the number of infections in the country, e-commerce firms such as Flipkart and 1MG have seen a significant increase in the demand for COVID-19 essentials such as oximeters.

“The sale of oximeters and test kits saw a surge of over 4.4x and 12x in metros,” said a Flipkart spokesperson.

1MG also said that the sale of testing kits grew five-fold in the first week of January as compared to the last week of December. “They’re growing at a rate of 50 per cent week on week. Our overall sales have seen a growth of around 40-50 per cent in the last couple of weeks,” said Prateek Verma, Head ePharmacy Tata 1mg. “We are able to service most orders being placed, since we have been building up capacity in advance. We have a lot more labs as well as pharma capacity today than during the last wave, and hope it will help,” he added.

Manufacturer of CoviSelf, Mylab Discovery Solutions also said that Maharashtra, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh are the top states where the demand for their kits was high.

Rajiv Singhal, General Secretary of All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD) said that Piramal, which distributes self-testing kits, recorded a sale of 4 lakh kits in just the first nine days of January across the country. “Of course this is because of the delay in getting testing slots from labs, but we also think people are buying and keeping a few kits to be safe,” he said, adding that in December, Piramal accounted for the sale of 1.39 lakh self-testing kits.

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