Food and toilet paper shortage: In the beginning

17:15 pm… 10 Downing Street… Thursday 12 March 2020…

Boris Johnson announced the news we were all apprehensive about.

All pupils and staff were told not to come into school if you had any of the COVID-19 symptoms (a cough, temperature, loss of taste or smell) this was only the start of the knock-on effect that led to total lockdown. ‘Due to the current outbreak and spread of COVID-19 and the update from Public Health England the guidance for Educational settings: Pupils and staff cannot come to school if they have a new, persistent cough or a temperature (higher than 37.8 degrees) and shouldn’t leave home for 7 days!’ This was to come into place from Friday 13th March (creepy right!)!

On 23rd March 2020

Boris Johnson announced the National Lockdown.

We couldn’t go to school (apart from a select few whose parents were keyworkers) and we had to start online learning. We were all scared, not just for the patients of COVID, but also for the future, because it was all so unknown.

The food and toilet paper crisis emerged at the very beginning of the pandemic.

The government had told Britain that we might be locking down; people thought that supermarkets would close and that they would not be able to buy food and necessities due to not being able to get out of their homes!

Many people in the UK took that as an invitation to panic-buy. They piled into shops and stocked their trolleys high with canned food, toilet paper, masks, hand sanitiser and many more items. People were buying up to thirty cans of tomato soup at one time! This meant that supermarkets were chaos and there was little food left for others. This shows that the uncertainty of what was to come made the public make decisions that were really quite silly to most people! It got so bad that supermarkets and the government had to put in place rules actually limiting how many items people bought!

Britain really hadn’t seen anything quite like it, ever!

With the COVID-19 virus spreading across the country, the United Kingdom was one of the later places to lock down.

This meant that we weren’t allowed out of our homes to purchase much food, clothes, etc. So, everyone moved to online shopping. However, ‘essential’ shops could open at most times. The government assessed which shops were essential (e.g. supermarkets) and which were non-essential (card shops, pubs, hairdressers etc.).

But, non-essential shops were finally allowed to reopen on 9th June 2020 - under strict guidelines of course. Bigger chains and retailers decided to gradually open their shops, like John Lewis who decided to open 15 branches initially. I remember the joy of finally leaving my house to walk around a shop (even if we did have to wear masks). Lots of shops had to shut down because they went bankrupt after having no customers for months.