Mosquito repellent has found its way back into Big Island stores — although stocks and selection are thin in places.
Retailers have had a tough time keeping the coveted product on their shelves as the battle against dengue fever continues and about a half dozen cases are added to the tally each day. However, multiple Big Island retailers reported having at least some of the product available this week.
“We’ve been getting it in, but it runs out real fast,” said Eric Edmund, a stock clerk at KTA Super Stores in Keauhou.
The store had 11 cases of Off! Active available this week, and also displayed repellent stickers and wristbands the outlet doesn’t normally carry.
South Kona resident Sylvia Harrington stopped by the store for a new wristband Wednesday. Located 8 miles from Hookena Beach Park — which remains closed because of the outbreak — Harrington is nervous about the disease’s slow, steady march.
“I wear a band and put up mosquito punks every day,” she said.
KTA in downtown Hilo has sufficient stocks of Off! spray and mosquito coils after an earlier shortage, with new supplies arriving this week, a clerk said. The situation at the Kailua-Kona branch is similar, with 6-ounce Off! and coils in good supply, but a scarcity of other choices.
The total number of people sickened by dengue reached 122 Wednesday. They included 93 adults, 29 children and 16 visitors. More cases have cropped up from Keauhou to the Hookena area, and new cases have appeared in Hawaiian Paradise Park, according to a recently updated map posted on the Hawaii County Civil Defense website.
County and state workers have sprayed 216 sites to try to knock down mosquitoes that might be infected with dengue.
Civil Defense, the state Department of Health and community emergency response teams also are working to address more than 50 complaints of standing water on public property or land where contact cannot be made with the owner.
When news of the outbreak first hit the front page of Big Island newspapers, it didn’t take people long to line up for the spray. Like a lot of stores, Kmart in Kailua-Kona had only its normal supply on hand and was left short. Currently, the store has plenty of Off! Deep Woods in stock, said store manager Robert O’Meara.
“The demand has increased dramatically, among locals and definitely the tourists,” O’Meara said.
Longs Drugs also has supplies of repellent, with a clerk reporting “plenty” in stock at the Keauhou store and employees at Hilo Longs saying spray is on the shelves and more is coming.
Longs stores on the Big Island will be fully stocked by the end of the week, and ordered supplies to meet the level of demand they’re expecting, said Mike DeAngelis, spokesman for CVS, Longs’ parent company.
“We also donated 100 cases to Aloha United Way,” DeAngelis said. “There was a run, which is why we’re experiencing the shortage. It takes a container about two weeks to get to Hawaii from the mainland.”
Sports Authority in Kailua-Kona had 10 bottles of repellent and more is on order, but manager James Welsh was not sure when they would arrive. The store had a good supply of sprays, pump bottle repellent, wristbands and other types of deterrent on hand last week, but that’s gone now, Welsh said.
Mosquito traps also are in high demand.
On Wednesday, a distribution coordinator for Trap-N-Kill mosquito traps said a shipment of 360 traps would arrive Friday at the Home Depot in Hilo.
“It wasn’t like we went looking for (Hawaii Island). We got found,” said Jim Campbell of Washington-based Spring Star Inc. “We were going to start selling this product in Home Depot stores in the first of the year, and then you got this dengue fever, and people started calling us, and then the Home Depot got hold of us.”
Trap-N-Kill traps are designed to mimic old tires lying in a yard, he said. They provide a dark, protected place that naturally attracts Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, both possible carriers of dengue fever. However, inside they are met with a strip of pesticide that can kill them within a minute. If they lay eggs in the trap, the larvae are killed once they emerge from their eggs.
However, when asked during a community meeting in Hilo last month about dengue fever, Maui County Health Officer Dr. Lorrin Pang said he didn’t think traps would be terribly effective in containing the outbreak.
“You’re only catching so many mosquitoes. … It’s just a drop in the bucket,” he said.
Campbell agreed, saying the traps work best when many are used on a property in conjunction with other mosquito control measures, including mitigating other standing water sources.
“They’re right, if you only have one or two, they’re just a novelty,” he said of the traps. “They’re designed to work in numbers. … If you have an acre, about 12 would do it. And the less water sources on your property, the more effective these traps are. They mimic a breeding site. Mosquitoes are like that, they skip from one breeding site to the next. But if you catch them in one of these, that will stop them.”
He added that his company contracted with the West Palm Beach Mosquito Control district in Florida to provide traps as part of its dengue prevention efforts.
“The program is best when municipalities get involved,” he said.
Email Bret Yager at byager@westhawaiitoday.com and Colin Stewart at cstewart@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
