Scared diners stay home:
handwash and vitamins fly off the shelves.
On Auckland’s iconic Dominion Rd, it’s been quiet since fear of coronavirus took hold. Restaurateurs and retailers are reporting a downturn as people stay away.
One Eden Valley Chinese restaurant-owner said many of her customers were international students. She had been hoping for a reprieve from the Government’s temporary travel ban, but those hopes have been dashed.
The Government said yesterday it was extending the ban refusing entry for any foreign travellers leaving from, or transiting through, mainland China. There are no confirmed cases in New Zealand yet. But some have found a silver lining. Sylvia Wang, a health shop worker, said infection-prevention products were in low supply in China, so she was posting products to customers overseas. ‘‘Lots of people are asking for handwash and natural hand-sanitiser and some products to help improve the immune system.’’
Wang said $10 hand-sanitiser bottles and $15 packs of 300 vitamin C were in high demand. Her business, which she didn’t want named, was shipping products to China and only adding a delivery fee of $7 a kilogram.
Another health store retail assistant on the same block said health concerns and a fear of more travel disruption was scaring Chinese customers here and abroad. ‘‘For the restaurants, it’s really quiet.’’ She believed Chinese diners were avoiding Chinese eateries and going elsewhere.
She had a face mask on and also wore a ‘‘viral barrier’’ patch at the end of a lanyard around her neck.
The barrier, marketed as reducing airborne microbes in a metre radius around the wearer, was popular in hospitals and she bought hers three weeks ago for $25.
A local chef entered the store as she spoke. The Chinese chef, hearing coronavirus being discussed, cracked a joke about being ‘‘from Wuhan’’. But then he said local business was abysmal. The retail assistant, translating for him, said some diners were concerned restaurant staff might have been in Wuhan or exposed to coronavirus over the Chinese New Year holidays.
She had heard that online sales, including deliveries to China, were driving the health-product business. And she believed consumers in China were stocking up on New Zealand-made infant formula fearing possible flight bans might cut air freight.
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