ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

At least 10 people have died in southern India after drinking hand sanitiser as an alcohol substitute.

The incident occurred after liquor stores were closed in Andhra Pradesh as part of a local lockdown when COVID-19 cases rose. District police chief Siddharth Kaushal said the people who died had mixed the sanitiser with water and soft drinks.

"Some people who are heavily addicted to alcohol had been consuming hand sanitisers for the high," he said. "Alcohol is not available because of the lockdown, but hand sanitisers are easy to come by. We are investigating whether the sanitiser had any other toxic content."

While much of India is open for business, many states are enforcing local lockdowns as clusters of the virus emerge. Confirmed cases of coronavirus in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh were reported to have increased nine-fold over the course of a month.

Meanwhile in the US, at least four people have died and 26 have been hospitalised in Arizona after ingesting hand sanitiser containing methanol, according to officials. Some of the victims claim to have experienced symptoms such as visual disturbances, vision loss and a severely altered mental state.

And in the UK, there have been reports of people smashing up hand sanitiser stations to drink the alcohol inside. Vandals have been breaking into dispensers in South Shields, South Tyneside, and transferring the liquid into bottles so that it can be more readily drunk.

The UK government has warned perpetrators that sanitiser is highly dangerous to human health.