Ter­ri­fied of fac­ing food and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal short­ages be­cause of the spread of the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic, cit­i­zens across the coun­try have start­ed en­gag­ing in pan­ic buy­ing.

Stripped bare of dis­in­fec­tant wipes, hand san­i­tiz­ers, liq­uid soap and toi­let pa­per, the shelves at var­i­ous busi­ness­es were be­ing con­tin­u­al­ly re­stocked yes­ter­day.

At the Pen­ny­wise Su­per­centre in La Ro­maine, some items ran out.

As­sis­tant man­ag­er Matthew Joseph said, "Be­cause of the coro­n­avirus peo­ple are pan­ic buy­ing, so there is a high de­mand for dis­in­fec­tants, liq­uid soaps and san­i­tiz­ers. Some of the shelves are emp­ty."

He said the price of the items have re­mained the same de­spite the in­crease in de­mand. How­ev­er, he said in or­der to share the items among cus­tomers they have lim­it­ed the amount of sup­plies to peo­ple.

"We are al­low­ing cus­tomers to buy on­ly six cans of dis­in­fec­tant wipes. Peo­ple have been com­ing here and ask­ing for cas­es," he added.

Joseph said the rush for prod­ucts es­ca­lat­ed over the past two days. That could now in­crease con­sid­er­ably af­ter T&T an­nounced its first COVID-19 case yes­ter­day.

On Wednes­day, Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump an­nounced that the US would is­sue a 30-day ban on trav­el from the Eu­ro­pean Union, ex­clud­ing the Unit­ed King­dom and a num­ber of oth­er no­table ex­cep­tions, from to­day. This does not ban car­go or goods but it is ex­pect­ed that this will have dire glob­al eco­nom­ic ram­i­fi­ca­tions.

Don­ald Har­riper­sad, who went to the Pen­ny­wise Su­per­centre, said he was ex­pect­ing some rel­a­tives from New York who had ac­tu­al­ly asked him to pur­chase san­i­tiz­ers in Trinidad to send back to the US.

"My fam­i­ly is com­ing in from abroad and they said san­i­tiz­ers were ex­pen­sive and hard to get in New York, so they asked me to pick up some but when I got here the shelves are emp­ty," Har­riper­sad said.

He said he planned to go to Price­mart to see if he could get any more sup­plies.

Bachani Cipri­ani, who was seen pick­ing up clean­ing sup­plies, said she was tak­ing no chances.

"It is bet­ter to be safe than sor­ry. I have a grand­child so I am not tak­ing any chances," she said.

At the phar­ma­cy, there were al­so long lines as peo­ple stocked up on chil­dren's cough syrup, Panadol and oth­er phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

At Price­mart in La Ro­maine, it was a sim­i­lar scene. Shelves of bleach and Lysol had been re­stocked. Cas­es of toi­let pa­per were be­ing pur­chased along with oth­er es­sen­tials. The sit­u­a­tion was the same at the Price­mart branch­es in Ch­agua­nas, D'abadie and Port-of-Spain.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of PriceS­mart, Inc, Sher­ry S. Bahram­beygui, said the com­pa­ny was mon­i­tor­ing in­ven­to­ries in the sup­ply chain and up­stream.

"As of to­day, we are main­tain­ing good in­ven­to­ry on a ma­jor­i­ty of our prod­ucts. We are ac­tive­ly seek­ing ad­di­tion­al in­ven­to­ry you may need on an ex­pe­dit­ed ba­sis. We are set­ting rea­son­able lim­its on the num­ber of units of cer­tain items that can be pur­chased, in an ef­fort to serve all of our Mem­bers," Bahram­beygui said.

She added, "We’ve ramped up the fre­quen­cy and in­ten­si­ty of clean­ing pro­to­cols and ded­i­cat­ed more staff to this im­por­tant re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. San­i­tiz­ing wipes are near work­sta­tions and hand san­i­tiz­ers are avail­able through­out the clubs. High-touch ar­eas such as door han­dles, carts, food ser­vice and re­stroom ar­eas are cleaned more of­ten and more thor­ough­ly. Sam­pling of un­sealed food prod­ucts has been sus­pend­ed."

Bahram­beygui said Price­mart has al­so sus­pend­ed all non-es­sen­tial busi­ness trav­el and has can­celled large in-per­son meet­ings and busi­ness events.