Thieves in Japan have made off with some 6,000 surgical masks from a hospital, with the country facing a mass shortage and a huge price hike online due to the coronavirus.

Axar.az reports citing foreign media that four boxes containing the face masks disappeared from a locked storage facility at the Japanese Red Cross hospital in the western port city of Kobe, a hospital official said on Tuesday (Feb 18).

"We still have a large number of masks - enough to continue our daily operations at the hospital, but this is so deplorable," the official stated.