Clorox Wipes Won't Be Back in Stores Any Time Soon

And they were more effective against coronavirus than the other sold-out goods.

Two containers of Clorox wipes on otherwise empty store shelves.
Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

Fire up your harp tunes, switch on the fog machine, close your eyes and think way, way back to March, when we collectively experienced the great toilet paper shortage of 2020. It was the first in a series of shortages that included beef, eggs, and yeast. All but the latter are more or less attainable all these months later, but a new product has since gone missing: Clorox wipes. And they probably won’t be back ‘til next year. 

"Given the fact that cold and flu [season] sits in the middle of the year, and then we expect the pandemic to be with us for the entirety of the year, it will take the full year to get up to the supply levels that we need to be at," Clorox President Linda Rendle said in a recent company earnings call, CNN reported.

The wipes, which, as a reminder, “are not suitable for consumption or injection under any circumstances,” come in 75-count plastic tubes bearing the critical promise that each wipe “kills 99.9% of viruses* and bacteria” including “human coronavirus [and] influenza A2 virus.” And it isn’t those sweet killer chemicals that have run dry, but rather the material for the wipes themselves, ABC News reported.  

On the upside, we can all take a break from breathlessly scouring the internet in search of the convenient, handheld corona killers and lean into alternative disinfectants. USA Today has a helpful guide right here.

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