"In almost all the pharmacies where the surgical masks have been delivered at a discounted price, for example in Rome, the surgical masks are already finished . They have not yet been delivered in other large cities such as Milan and Turin and there is still a deadlock on the lack of masks. Pharmacists are available for sale, but the huge quantities promised, so that the latter were in the availability of pharmacies, unfortunately have not arrived. We are back and forth on this ". Marco Cossolo, president of Federfarma said so.
"In addition to the masks, there is a very strong lack of gloves and alcohol to disinfect . They are nowhere to be found in Italian pharmacies." To give voice to a problem "encountered from north to south of the peninsula" is Roberto Tobia, national secretary of Federfarma. "The price of latex or nitrile gloves has tripled or quadrupled in the past few months since the Covid-19 emergency." This, he continues, "derives from the very high purchase cost paid by the pharmacy to suppliers, due to the fact that the raw materials have increased, the demand has multiplied by a thousand and the inventories are now over".
"The only ones we are distributing are those three million coming from the Civil Protection and by tomorrow they will already be finished against a requirement of 10 million per day. We are full of requests and unfortunately there are several million masks blocked and seized during the checks, often for bureaucratic hitches: this short circuit should be eliminated, "said Antonello Mirone, president of Federfarma Servizi, the National Association of Distributors of Medicines and PPE.