TOKYO: People from around Japan are stepping up support for remaining residents in locked-down Wuhan, a major Chinese city at the center of a coronavirus outbreak.

Inagora Inc., an e-commerce operator based in Tokyo, launched a campaign on Tuesday to ship face masks to residents in Wuhan and other parts of the Hubei province free of charge.

The operator of the Wandou e-commerce platform to sell Japanese goods to Chinese customers saw all 10,000 packages containing five face masks each "sold out" in roughly an hour after applications for orders began.

"I hope people there can spend the Luna New Year holiday at ease," said Inagora spokesperson Kanako Itano.

According to Itano, paid orders for face masks have skyrocketed since the new coronavirus outbreak, by up to some 300-fold per day. Orders for antibacterial sheets, mouthwash and hand soaps have also exploded.

The city of Oita, southwestern Japan, sent 30,000 masks it had saved up for disaster relief purposes on Monday in boxed with a message reading "Wuhan Jiayou!" meaning "Hang in there, Wuhan!" in Chinese. Oita and Wuhan have been sister cities for 40 years.

The masks will reach Wuhan via the Red Cross network because the situation does not allow the city to directly receive donated goods across the globe, according to the Oita city government's Cultural and International Affairs Division.

"The people of Wuhan are like family," Soichiro Hayashi, head of the division's International Affairs Office, said. "I hope people can return to their ordinary lives as quickly as possible."

The Tokyo metropolitan government donated 20,000 protective suits for medical staff working to treat patients with pneumonia caused by the coronavirus in Hubei. The suits were loaded on a plane that the Japanese government chartered to bring home Japanese citizens stuck in Wuhan.

Pace Winds Japan, a nonprofit organization specializing in humanitarian aid, has sent one staff member to China to work with local disaster relief groups to distribute face masks and other goods the organization brought to the country.

JIJI Press