CRUNCH TIME: Yahoo said its local shopping site was sold out of its entire 10,000 mask stock within nine minutes of opening for online orders

Taipei Times
Date: Jun 04, 2020
By: Chen Ping-hung and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer

Despite the Central Epidemic Command Center having eased mask rationing in light of sufficient production and Taiwan’s COVID-19 situation being under control, people are still racing to buy masks, with major online platforms, such as Yahoo, PChome Online and Momo.com yesterday reporting almost near-instantaneous server crashes after they started taking orders for masks.

Yahoo said its online shopping site began sales at 10am, with its servers quickly becoming overloaded and reporting errors when people tried to access them.

By 10:09am, its entire stock of more than 10,000 masks procured from Taiwan-based China Surgical Dressings Center Co (CSD) was sold out.

Yahoo reported that its first batch of CSD masks sold out within five minutes of being placed on the site at 10pm on Tuesday.    [FULL  STORY]