Empty Shop Shelves, COVID 19, 2020
The panic buying caused by the fear of lockdown will be remembered by many. Shops sold out of toilet roll, pasta, tinned food, soap, hand sanitiser, pain killers and disinfectant and when lockdown came, supplies of many foods were affected, and this continued throughout this period. Key workers and NHS staff who worked long hours struggled to buy groceries at the end of their shifts as nothing was left in the shops. People would queue outside shops before they opened in order to buy their groceries, while many families struggled to put food on the table, relying on the food parcel charities. Online grocery shopping slots were fully booked for weeks, if not months, in advance with websites crashing due to too many people trying to get online at the same time; many would wait until midnight for new delivery slots to open.
Many shops started 'priority shopping' for key workers, NHS staff and the elderly during the lockdown allowing them to shop before everyone else, usually for a couple of hours in the morning, twice a week.
The photos in this collection show the empty shop shelves in stores across Wales prior to and during the 2020 lockdown.
