After baby milk powder, tampons have now also become scarce on the shelves of some stores in the USA. Pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens confirmed to news agency AFP yesterday that some brands are temporarily unavailable in certain regions. Republicans blamed US President Joe Biden.
The manufacturer Procter & Gamble admitted that customers in the USA might not be able to fall back on their usual hygiene products. The group assured “that this is a temporary situation”. The factories were “producing tampons around the clock to meet the increased demand for our products.”
Hamster purchases and lack of raw materials
The manufacturer Edgewell pointed to “long labor shortages due to two outbreaks of the omicron variant” of the corona virus in a US factory in late 2021 and at a Canadian supplier in early 2022 as the cause of the shortage of tampons and pads. The group expects that the situation will return to normal in the next few weeks.
According to supply chain expert Patrick Penfield of Syracuse University in upstate New York, the shortages are due to panic buying “like toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic”. There is also a shortage of certain commodities, including cotton and plastic.
A lack of staff due to the pandemic is another reason for the production problems. In his estimation, the situation will normalize once more in the next six months.