Long lines, low supplies: Coronavirus chaos sends shoppers into panic-buying mode
The panic began slowly, with shoppers looking for face masks and hand sanitizer. But it hit a fever pitch over the weekend as shoppers descended on supermarkets and big-box stores, snapping up cleaning supplies, toilet paper and nonperishable foods to prepare for the coronavirus.
“It has gotten crazier by the day,” said a Target employee who fulfills online orders at a store in Richmond, Va. “A lot of it is obviously panic-buying, people stocking up on eight gallons of water or 20 kinds of soups. Items are selling out immediately, as soon as they go up on shelves."
The United States reported its first two coronavirus deaths over the weekend, sparking fears of a broader outbreak and widespread closures. That motivated Americans to hit their local supermarkets, pharmacies and warehouse stores to stock up on necessities, resulting in bare shelves and long lines, even in areas without any coronavirus cases. A Target store in Colma, Calif., sold out of bottled water. A Costco in San Francisco is out of Clorox wipes. The Home Depot is limiting customers to 10 face masks per person.
At Kings Pharmacy in Manhattan, the last shipment of Purell sold out within 30 minutes. Now customers are showing up with Internet recipes for homemade hand sanitizers, leading to a run on aloe vera gel and rubbing alcohol.
“Everything is on back order," said Jones Chen, who owns the Manhattan pharmacy. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
The relentless spread of the coronavirus, which has killed more than 3,000 people worldwide, has sparked the kind of panic-buying normally reserved for natural disasters. But unlike a hurricane, which delivers destruction before moving on, there is no end in sight to this outbreak — and it’s making shoppers crazy.
“Consumers’ irrational behavior will certainly do more damage than reality will,” said Allen Adamson, a consumer brand consultant who teaches at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “People are emotionally-driven and nervous, and nothing makes them more nervous than a threat they can’t see."
Sales of medical masks have risen 78 percent in the most recent week, compared to the same period last year, according to Nielsen. Other items that have experienced a sales surge include hand sanitizer (up 54 percent), thermometers (34 percent), disinfectant sprays (19 percent) and dried beans (10 percent).
An employee at a Whole Foods in Los Altos, Calif., said the store was out of “pasta, beans, frozen vegetables, hand sanitizer, toilet paper, paper towels. There’s a little bottled water left,” she said. “I’ve worked here 10 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
As of Monday, the virus has shown up in 60 countries and sickened nearly 90,000 people. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that community spread of the coronavirus in the United States was inevitable, and urged businesses, hospitals and communities to brace for impact. So far, local transmission of the virus has been concentrated in California and Washington state, where it probably had been spreading undetected for the past six weeks, according to new research. The two U.S. fatalities were in Washington state.