After World Health Organisation on Wednesday announced “severe and mounting disruption to the global supply of personal protective equipment”,  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. Obsessively documented on social media, scrambles to the shops and empty shelves are adding panic and confusion to the fight against an epidemic that has killed thousands, placed millions under quarantine and battered global markets.

Severe and mounting disruption to the global supply of personal protective equipment – caused by rising demand, panic buying, hoarding and misuse – is putting lives at risk from the new #coronavirus and other infectious diseases https://t.co/XM7RlcivuV#COVID19 pic.twitter.com/GP129mzoMg

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— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) March 3, 2020

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Australia’s biggest supermarket this week began rationing sales of toilet paper after police had to be called to a shop in Sydney when a knife was drawn in a scuffle over the scarce commodity. On Saturday Japan’s prime minister took to Twitter to calm fears of a national shortage, while social media photos from the US show toilet paper shelves lying bare.

Psychologists say a mix of herd mentality and over-exposure to coverage of the virus is to blame. “We might be less irrational if we weren’t being reminded so much of the potential dangers by the news,” London-based consumer psychologist Kate Nightingale told news agency AFP.

Single-use surgical masks that typically retail for just a few US cents are also hot property, exacerbated by restrictions on exports from China, the leading producer, as the government keeps more back for domestic usage.

The WHO has warned that severe and mounting disruption to the global supply of personal protective equipment (PPE), caused by rising demand, panic buying, hoarding, and misuse, is putting lives at risk from the new coronavirus and other infectious diseases.

But shortages are leaving doctors, nurses and other frontline workers dangerously ill-equipped to care for COVID-19 patients, due to limited access to supplies such as gloves, medical masks, respirators, goggles, face shields, gowns, and aprons.

“Without secure supply chains, the risk to healthcare workers around the world is real. Industry and governments must act quickly to boost supply, ease export restrictions and put measures in place to stop speculation and hoarding. We can’t stop COVID-19 without protecting health workers first,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

WHO has so far shipped nearly half a million sets of personal protective equipment to 47 countries,* but supplies are rapidly depleting.

Based on WHO modelling, an estimated 89 million medical masks are required for the COVID-19 response each month. For examination gloves, that figure goes up to 76 million, while international demand for goggles stands at 1.6 million per month.

(With inputs from AFP)