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The issue of oral protection has marked a milestone during the corona pandemic. In some countries it has been mandatory. In the United States, mouth protection has been seen as a political stance, and in Sweden, experts from the Swedish Public Health Agency have long questioned its importance in reducing the spread of infection.
DN has participated in the data from analytics company Nielsen IQ, which shows all mouthguard sales at five of the nation’s largest drug store chains in 2020 and 2021. The data also includes the grocery trade and shows how mouthguard sales were nearly non-existent until summer.
According to pharmacies, the reason DN has been in contact with is the explanation that there were simply no mouth guards to sell to consumers because the need and shortage in health care was great.
Read more: How to use mouth guards correctly
Since then, sales have multiplied.
– Normally it is a very small product, it is not even available in all pharmacies. But now we sell in both a week and a normal year, says Magnus Frisk’s press contact at Apoteket AB
At the beginning of June 2020 it changed Guidelines from the WHO oral hygiene, the world health organization, stated that they should be used in crowds and in places like public transport where distance is difficult to maintain.
State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell commented on the WHO recommendations to TT:
– Oral protection should be able to fit into a broader strategy and this is not the case in Sweden. In Sweden you should be at home if you are sick, he said then.
However, sales of mouth guards in Swedish pharmacies started to rebound in June. This is an increase that lasted throughout the summer and autumn until November, when it accelerated again.
– The summer and the beginning of autumn I and many others probably live as freer, you could start to return to a more normal life. Then came the big setback in which sickness and death rates rose and tighter restrictions came, says Anna Ekström, Nordic sales manager at Nielsen IQ, who compiled the data for DN.
Mid november the government introduced several more stringent restrictions. The mouth guards sold for more than SEK 16.3 million in one week, compared to just under SEK 4.5 million a month earlier.
Sales reached a new peak again before Christmas, when restrictions were tightened again in Sweden. This meant, among other things, that the Swedish Public Health Agency recommended oral protection in public transport during peak hours.
According to data from Nielsen IQ, sales of mouth guards have increased dramatically in the weeks around the turn of the year and early 2021, but remain at a very high level.
– In general, if you look at the individual weeks, they will go up and down regardless of the product, there are many things that can affect, says Anna Ekström.
Nielsen IQ data includes not the Apotea online pharmacy, which lacks physical stores. Apotea CEO Pär Svärdson tells DN that its sales of mouth guards have also increased dramatically, from just over 500,000 mouth guards in October 2020 to 2.3 million in January.
In early spring 2020, there was a major shortage of protective equipment in health and care, which meant that Apotea temporarily removed oral protection from its range. Pär Svärdson says that there were many rogue players who tried to enter the market then.
– I felt like I received an email a day from someone who generally sold cars or something else, but who said they found a lot of “super cheap” mouth guards in Turkey, he says.
– But today, mouth guards are not a difficult product to buy from major established vendors.
