Condom companies are the latest victims of the coronavirus.
There’s no love in the time of coronavirus for contraceptive businesses, whose sales have taken a worldwide dive as isolationists abstain from sex during quarantine. The unfortunate news comes a mere month after COVID-19 concerns caused the globe’s biggest condom producer to shut down.
Laxman Narasimhan, chief executive of Durex’s parent company Reckitt Benckiser, attributed the flaccid profit margins to the stringent social-distancing precautions taking a “toll on the number of intimate occasions in the UK,” reports the Guardian.
Since March 23, the UK and other countries have been under a nationwide lockdown that, among other restrictions, forced couples to choose between quarantining together and isolating separately. Singles, too, have been faced with the prospect of abstinence or throwing caution to the wind with a risky Tinder hookup.
As a result, UK youths and their counterparts in Italy are having a lot less hanky panky than before, according to the Reckitt boss. Last week the hygiene giant sold a record amount of disinfectant as isolationists scrambled to stock up on anti-COVID supplies, reports Reuters.
The coronavirus isn’t just affecting casual hookups. Narasimhan says established UK couples are having less sex as well, which he calls a “manifestation of anxiety” caused by the coronavirus. Meanwhile, their US counterparts have resorted to cyber affairs to beat the boudoir doldrums, dispelling the notion that a couple that stays together lays together.
Fortunately, Reckitt Benckiser predicts that the nation’s flatlining condom demand will be back at full mast before long. Case in point: condom sales in China are bouncing back to pre-pandemic levels as the government lifts stay-at-home restrictions, according to Narasimhan.
Sexperts also project that there will be a post-COVID baby boom in 2021 as state-mandated lockdowns prompt more couples to try to conceive, reports the BBC.
In the meantime, the sex deprived can tide themselves over safely with good old-fashioned self-pleasure, according to a recent memo by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.