Sales of masks and self-test kits at South Korean convenience stores have risen sharply as COVID-19 indicators tick up ahead of the new school term.
Sales of infection-control products at the country's three major convenience store chains all increased this month, retail industry officials said on the 28th. At Seven Eleven, sales of COVID-19 self-test kits from the 1st to the 26th rose 62% from the previous month, while cold medicine gained 15%, masks 17% and fever-reducing painkillers 14%.
The steepest increase came in masks for children and toddlers. At GS25, test kit sales rose 30.3% and cold medicine 10.3% over the same period, while masks for children and toddlers surged 341.0% — more than four times the previous month's volume.
The jump reflects demand for infection prevention from households with students and young children as the school term begins. At CU, test kit sales from the 1st to the 23rd rose 45.7% from a year earlier and cold medicine 12.2%.
China's Positive Test Rate Tops 20%
Behind the sales increases is a genuine rebound in COVID-19 indicators.
China's COVID-19 positive test rate has risen for five consecutive weeks to exceed 20%, with 522,000 new cases reported last month alone. Conditions in South Korea are similar. The COVID-19 virus detection rate reached 9.1% in the second week of August, nearly 2.8 times higher than three weeks earlier. Hospital admissions at hospital-level medical institutions rose 2.4-fold over the past month.
Convenience stores are seen as the channel where "self-protection" demand shows up first at the earliest sign of an infectious disease outbreak, because test kits, masks and cold medicine can be bought immediately nearby. Demand for masks and household medicines may rise further among children and adolescents as the school term begins.
An industry official said demand for COVID-19 related products tends to move not only on actual case increases but on growing concern about infection alone, and predicted that consumers will continue seeking such products for some time as the start of the school term coincides with the change of seasons.
