CLEARWATER, Fla. — A Clearwater company saw sales for its advanced hypochlorous skin spray skyrocket from 120 bottles a month to 20,000 in March, and it appears COVID-19 may be the reason. 

"I started polling my customers to find out, 'Why are you buying it? Why are you buying it?' Because I suspected it was something to do with the virus, but I can't make any claims," said Curativa Bay CEO Bill Maher. 

The company's website lists some of the benefits of the product as improving skin tone and providing relief to injuries, "with proven cleansing, soothing, and calming affects."

Maher said the feedback he got was that people were attracted by the spray's main ingredient, hypochlorous acid.

Hypochlorous acid is named as the active ingredient in a number of disinfectants on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's "List N", which meet criteria for use against the coronavirus. 

"Hypochlorous acid is actually kind of the water form of things that we use to disinfect, like bleach," said Dr. Michael Teng, an associate professor in the University of South Florida's Department of Internal Medicine.

"There's no chemicals in it, there's no additives," said Maher of his company's skin spray. "It's a proprietary way to stabilize it so it stays in the bottle."

Maher said Curativa Bay has mailed shipments nationwide, including to hospitals and police stations. He said the company isn't making any claims about the skin spray's impact on coronavirus.

It's also in the process of making a cleaning product using hypochlorous acid, an area Teng said the substance is known to be beneficial in.

"If you spray it on there and let it sit for a few minutes — I think the recommended number of minutes is about ten — it's going to kill the virus, even viruses that are a little bit harder to kill than the coronavirus," said Teng.