The push by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to create hand sanitizer during the pandemic has left the state with a glut of the product it can no longer use.
The state has been forced to shelve 700,000 gallons of the goopy stuff following the federal government’s order putting the kibosh on distributing any sanitizer that was made by non-drug manufacturers after March.
Cuomo’s NYS Clean initiative distributed nearly 1 million gallons of hand sanitizer to local governments, nursing homes, hospitals and schools since March 2020, according to New York’s Office of General Services.
But the Food and Drug Administration, which set up temporary protocols for producing massive amounts of hand sanitizer during the pandemic, has decided that any product leftover from those batches cannot be distributed anymore.
The problem is that no one wants the surplus sanitizer and New York doesn’t yet know how to dispose of it.
Right now the product is sitting unused in the New York State Preparedness Training Center in Oriskany, according to a State of Politics report.
Retailers have also been stuck with excess sanitizer and started giving it away last year.
“New York State is continuing to store the material in the safest manner possible now that FDA regulations prohibit the State from distributing the remaining supply of NYS Clean hand sanitizer, and we are determining the proper method for disposal and the timeline for doing so,” OGS spokesperson, Heather Groll, said in a statement.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
