Surgical masks: significant price variations

The spring shortage is over. With the influx of masks produced in China into the French market, prices have been lowered. Gone are the days when all masks were sold at the ceiling unit price of € 0.95. Good thing: wearing a mask is now compulsory. Their cost has therefore become an economic issue for all households, especially for large and more precarious families.

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Up to five times more expensive

The editorial staff of “L’Est Républicain”, of “Républicain Lorrain” and of “Vosges Matin” therefore mobilized to raise the unit price of disposable surgical masks in various points of sale in Lorraine. From this representative study, without being exhaustive, a great diversity of prices emerges, which can be found in detail on our websites.

The prices noted this Wednesday, September 15 at random from the wanderings of our editorial staff vary from 1 to 5. And contrary to certain received ideas, it is not the drives of supermarkets which necessarily offer the least expensive products. In our region, the palm of the inexpensive mask is picked up by a Vosges pharmacy (the Bruelle pharmacy in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges): € 0.18 per disposable surgical mask. There are also pharmacies that sometimes still sell masks at the ceiling price of € 0.95 (notably two in Moselle in Thionville and one in Meurthe-et-Moselle in Longwy). From 0.18 to 0.95, the delta is important. Related to a box of 50 masks, the variation is € 9 to € 47.50.

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Old inventory paid for at full price?

According to several pharmacists, it is the persistence in their stocks of masks bought at a high price that is at the origin of this diversity of prices. “Following the shortage of masks at the beginning of the year, we did everything to try to get them even if, at the time, the prices were relatively high. However, in some pharmacies these stocks of expensive masks have not yet been sold. They are therefore on sale at higher prices than those supplied today at prices sometimes four times lower, ”explains René Paulus, president of the Lorraine order of pharmacists since 2015 and responsible for the Grand Est regional order. .

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