Residents have claimed they have started to see signs of panic-buying in and around Andover stores.

Our social media followers have reportedly seen shoppers stocking up on items such as disinfectant, loo roll and milk.

The scenes are reminiscent of six months ago as the lockdown was first introduced.

According to data from Nielsen Scantrack, Brits spent nearly £60m on stockpiling in the first week of coronavirus panic.

Consumers spent an extra £57.3m on items such as medicines, handwash and canned food in the first week of March as panic took hold over the spread of the coronavirus.

As rules were tightened last night big supermarket chains Asda, Tesco, Lidl, Aldi and Sainsbury's have stressed that they have good availability and are yet to experience any shortages.

They are urging shoppers to not panic buy and only purchase items they need.

Tesco

Tesco told the Gazette that they continue to have good availability in stores and online and are not experiencing any shortages.

They claim to have more than doubled their online capacity from around 600,000 weekly slots at the start of the crisis to 1.5 million now.

Sainsbury’s

A Sainsbury’s spokesperson assured us that customers can continue to shop with confidence in their stores, where they will see they have good availability.

They stated that they can now serve twice as many people with home delivery and Click & Collect than they could six months ago.

Aldi

CEO, Giles Hurley, wrote to customers yesterday (September 22) : “I would like to reassure you that our stores remain fully stocked and ask that you continue to shop considerately.

“There is no need to buy more than you usually would. We have remained open for our customers throughout the pandemic and will continue to have daily deliveries, often multiple times a day, across all of our products.”

Lidl

The store confirmed they were not currently experiencing any product shortages and had good availability in stores.

Asda

Asda assured they currently have good availability in our stores and the same can be said for their online slots.

Andrew Opie, Director of Food & Sustainability at the British Retail Consortium, said: “Supply chains are stronger than ever before and we do not anticipate any issues in the availability of food or other goods under a future lockdown. Nonetheless, we urge consumers to be considerate of others and shop as they normally would.”

Whilst the all the stores contacted claimed they have good avaiblity of products our readers have reportedly seen some people stocking up.

Laura Warters spotted some unusual buying habits yesterday: “In Asda some man was shoving all the Disinfectant wipes in his trolley and dettol sprays.”

Sue Heald added: “toilet roll and god knows why but iceberg lettuce" and Sandy Bulpitt struggled to get milk in the shops.