Shoppers buy toilet paper, food and water at a store, as people begin to panic buy and stockpile essentials from fear that supplies will be affected by the spread of the Covid-19, coronavirus outbreak across the country, in Los Angeles, California on February 29, 2020. PHOTO | MARK RALSTON | AFP
Shelves are being stripped bare of toilet rolls, hand sanitiser and surgical masks everywhere from Japan to France to the United States as panic buying criss-crosses the globe with the coronavirus, defying repeated calls for calm and disrupting supply chains.
