Australia’s major grocers put strict limits on purchases of toilet paper on Wednesday (March 4) after a rush of panic buying related to coronavirus fears emptied shelves as the country recorded its third case of local transmission of the disease.
Australia was one of the first countries to take a hardline on tackling the outbreak, imposing border controls on visitors from the epidemic’s epicenter in China a month ago.
Still, social media has been awash in recent days with photos and videos of people stockpiling goods, including sanitizing products and staples like rice and eggs.
The run on toilet paper in particular has sparked the trending hashtags #toiletpapergate and #toiletpapercrisis on Twitter, along with photos of overloaded shopping trolleys and calls for calm from baffled officials.
“We are trying to reassure people that removing all of the lavatory paper from the shelves of supermarkets probably isn’t a proportionate or sensible thing to do at this time,” Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy told a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday.
Woolworths Group, the country’s biggest grocery chain, restricted sales of the essential product to four packs a shopper. “It will help shore up stock levels as suppliers ramp up local production and deliveries in response to higher than usual demand,” the statement said.
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