The number of poisonings in the center has risen by 20% during a pandemic of the coronavirus

Fears of contracting coronavirus have increased calls to poison control centers in the U.S. by a fifth, a new report shows.

In the past three months, calls have soared 16 percent from this time in 2018 and 20 percent from this time last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed Monday.

The authors say centers have received several reports of adults going overboard with cleaning products, such as a woman soaking their products in bleach.

In another case, a preschool child accidentally drank hand sanitizer.

Although a causal relationship cannot be demonstrated, the timing of these reported exposures corresponded to increased media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, reports of consumer shortages of cleaning and disinfection products, and the onset of local and national residence at home orders the CDC wrote.

For the report, the authors looked at data from the National Poison Data System from January to March and the same months in 2019 and 2018.

The results showed that between January 2020 and March 2020, 45,550 calls were made to U.S. poison control centers regarding detergents and disinfectants.

This is an increase of 20.4 percent from the same three months last year and an increase of 16.4 percent from January to March in 2018.

In particular, the number of daily calls to poison control centers rose ‘sharply’ in early March 2020, both in terms of cleaning agents and disinfectants (figure).

The authors said that correlation is not necessarily equivalent to causation, but “there appears to be” a clear temporary association with an increasing use of these products, “they wrote.

Bleaching agents were the largest percentage of the increase in the cleaning category, at 62.1 percent.

Among the disinfectants, non-alcoholic disinfectants and hand sanitizers were the largest percentages of the increase, at 36.7 percent.

The increase was seen in all age groups, but was highest in children age five or younger, the CDC said.

During the three months of 2020, young children made up 35.7 percent of calls related to cleaners and 46.9 percent of calls related to disinfectants.

In one case, the CDC wrote about a toddler who was unresponsive by his or her parents and rushed to the hospital.

Her family said she accidentally took a 64-ounce bottle of ethanol-based hand sanitizer in the kitchen, got dizzy, fell, and hit her head.

In another case, an adult woman developed shortness of breath and wheezing after hearing the news to clean all the groceries before eating them.

To soak her products, she filled a sink with a mixture of 10 percent bleach solution, vinegar, and hot water.

“She … had mild hypoxemia (low blood oxygen and wheezing at the end of breathing. She improved with oxygen and bronchodilators,” the authors wrote.

In addition to the report, the CDC released an image of how to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and clean it safely.

This includes following label directions, not mixing chemicals, wearing protective clothing, ensuring adequate ventilation and keeping products out of reach of children.