London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Oct 14, 2025

Coronavirus: Tesco limits sales of essential items

Tesco, the UK's largest grocer, has begun restricting sales of essential food and household items as a result of coronavirus stockpiling.

Shoppers are limited to buying no more than five of certain goods, including antibacterial gels, wipes and sprays, dry pasta, UHT milk and some tinned vegetables

The rules apply in stores and online.

A government spokesperson said it was in touch with UK supermarkets to "discuss their response" to the virus.

Waitrose has introduced a temporary cap on some items on its website, including some anti-bacterial soaps and wipes.

The supermarket said it was in talks with its suppliers to ensure customer demand was met.

It said some individual stores may have introduced their own restrictions, with "some branch managers making a judgement at a localised level".

The High Street chemist Boots has restricted sales of hand sanitisers to two per person.

Asda is also restricting some types of hand sanitiser to two bottles per person - the supermarket's only restriction in place currently.

Meanwhile, Sainsbury's said it was not limiting sales of any products in stores or online yet.

On Monday, Environment Secretary George Eustice is expected to hold talks with supermarket and trade bosses about "support for vulnerable groups who may be in isolation", the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said.


'Short-term shortages'

According to a survey from Retail Economics, as many as one in 10 UK consumers is stockpiling, based on a sample of 2,000 shoppers.

But Dr Andrew Potter, chair in logistics and transport at Cardiff Business School, told the BBC: "Whilst there might be empty shelves at the moment in the shops, over the next week or so, we will see them replenish.

"The supply chain will start to deliver stuff through to the stores and hopefully this shortage - which is fairly short-term - will clear and everything will be back to normal again."

He said while retailers may have been caught out by the beginning of this shopping surge, they had very sophisticated systems to check changes in demand.

Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium, echoed that "supply chains remain robust and even where there are challenges, retailers are well-versed in providing measures" to keep shops running smoothly.

Waitrose said it has not put a cap on any of its products in stores.

But it has introduced a temporary cap on certain products on its website, including some anti-bacterial soaps and wipes, "to ensure our customers have access to the products they need".

UK retailers have been warned that they face prosecution if they exploit the coronavirus scare to hike prices for products such as hand sanitisers and face masks.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has told suppliers to act responsibly and said it was monitoring pricing practices.

It comes as Facebook and Amazon have cracked down on profiteers hiking prices online of face masks and hand sanitisers.

Facebook says it is temporarily banning ads and commercial listings for medical face masks. The ban will also apply to Instagram.

"We're monitoring Covid-19 closely and will make necessary updates to our policies if we see people trying to exploit this public health emergency," Facebook director of product management Rob Leathern tweeted.

"We'll start rolling out this change in the days ahead. We... anticipate profiteers will evolve their approach as we enforce on these ads."

Facebook had earlier announced a ban on ads for medical products which falsely suggested an item was in short supply, as well as those which falsely claimed to provide cures or prevention methods for coronavirus.

Meanwhile, Amazon said it had removed thousands of listings from its sites around the world and was constantly monitoring attempted price-gouging.


Gel price ramping

Analysis from Liberty Marketing has found UK own-brand hand sanitisers are being sold on eBay for huge mark ups, with Lidl 49p sanitisers selling for as much as £24.99 online.

Morrison's £2 hand sanitiser is being sold for £29.99.

The Tesco Health Antibacterial Hand Gel (50ml) is just 75p in-store and is being sold for as much as £9 on eBay.

Other supermarkets included in the research include Asda, with a 2,629% increase, and Morrisons, with a 1,400% increase.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
EU Deploys New Biometric Entry/Exit System: What Non-EU Travelers Must Know
Australian Prime Minister’s Private Number Exposed Through AI Contact Scraper
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
China’s lesson for the US: it takes more than chips to win the AI race
Australia Faces Demographic Risk as Fertility Falls to Record Low
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
×