Grocery stores and major retailers won’t have shelves fully stocked with disinfecting and cleaning products likely until the end of July, reports CNN.
The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 may survive for several days on some surfaces, and disinfectants like Lysol and Clorox wipes often do the trick in cleaning off contagions. But many of those items have been widely out of stock across the United States since mid-March – sales of aerosol disinfectants jumped 230.5 percent and multipurpose cleaners 109.1 percent in March and April from this point last year, according to research firm Nielsen.
"It's unpredictable," Steve Tracey, the executive director for the Center for Supply Chain Research at Penn State University, told CNN in an interview. "It's not a question of if — it's a question of when. It's very difficult to predict the when."
Patrick Penfield, a professor of supply chain management at Syracuse University, told CNN that manufacturers can’t keep up with demand.
"One of the issues is that they can't get enough ingredients for the disinfectants, the wipes, and that's been their biggest issue,” he said. “Most of those ingredients, the base ingredients, they actually come over from overseas and specifically China.
“So, for them it's really difficult and they're running their factories, nonstop right now and trust me when I say this, their preference would be to meet demand but they just can't because they can't get all the ingredients in order to make the actual product."
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.