Supermarkets Start Rationing Household Items Amid Coronavirus Panic Buying

The recent coronavirus scare has taught us many things, like washing your hands being a good way to keep them clean and that not coughing directly into someone's face is good manners.

People seem to have forgotten how shopping works however, panic buying things like loo roll and milk, stockpiling hand sanitiser and generally behaving like morons.

Now, supermarkets like Tesco and Waitrose have been forced to start limiting the amount of certain items customers can buy.

In an ideal world, if you were forced to stay indoors for a week or two, supermarkets would operate an online delivery system where you could buy things you needed via their website and have them delivered in a branded lorry or something.

Ah well. Maybe one day.

PA

Tesco is limiting people to five each of items including pasta, long-life milk and antibacterial products, just in case people don't understand that the more of that stuff you buy for yourself, the less for other people, who will then have dirty hands or starve.

Waitrose and Iceland are capping online sales of anti-bacterial soaps and wipes to four per person. A spokesperson for Waitrose said the cap was temporary, adding: "We continue to work with suppliers to help meet demand."

Aldi, Asda and Boots have limited sales of hand santiser to two per person, online and in stores.

Sainsbury's, Lidl and Morrison's are yet to impose any such limits.

The government has said that supermarkets won't run out of food if people stick to their normal shopping habits, which some shoppers have interpreted as getting into a punch up while trying to wrestle 48 bog rolls from each other - just like in this Australian supermarket.

PA

According to research company Kantar, hand sanitiser sales were up 255 percent in February alone. One UK company that makes the product told the BBC it had gone from making 100,000 bottles a month in December to 150,000 bottles a day in March.

It's not just supermarkets that are seeing demand for loo roll spiral - this amusement arcade owner has decided to get in on the action by filling up his grabber machine with toilet rolls that folks can try and win for 30p a go.

Well, that certainly sounds more fun than a trip to the local supermarket, doesn't it?

There are currently more than 106,000 cases of the coronavirus bug globally, with 273 confirmed cases in the UK after more than 23,000 people were tested.

Topics: Shopping, Coronavirus

Simon Binns

Simon is the editor of LADbible. He's also the former CityLife editor at the Manchester Evening News and has worked as a journalist for the BBC, The Guardian and loads of places you've never heard of. Boro fan. Parmo expert.

@simonbinns