‘Shop for essentials only’ supermarket staff have urged people in Pembrokeshire as the numbers of shoppers still arriving in groups or popping in for single items are highlighted.

One supermarket staff member in a Pembrokeshire store said: “Popping in for a jar of sauce is not essential, nor is having a flick through the magazines like some people are doing. It’s selfish, we have to be there, you don’t.”

Family groups also arrive for a “look around the shops” she continued, with two parents and children.

“Staff don’t want to be here, some are in tears they are so worried but people are not taking it seriously,” she added.

Panic buying seems to have predominately eased up with shelves fully stocked this week at Sainsbury’s in Tenby - a far cry from one of the supermarket’s stores in the UK last week where staff had to barricade an entire aisle from shoppers so they could restock toilet roll without being overrun by frantic panic-buyers!

The store introduced new measures last week to combat the deadly coronavirus pandemic, including limiting the number of people allowed in stores at a time.

Shoppers now have to queue 2m apart as requested by the government while staff are on hand to remind people to keep their distance from fellow customers.

“‘Since we put limits on the number of items people could buy, food and other essential items are on shelves for longer each day so please arrive throughout the day to avoid long queues forming in the morning,” said Sainsbury’s chief executive Mike Coupe.

Stores in Haverfordwest are waiting for staff protection measures such as sneeze guards to arrive, with some companies promoting the changes before they were in place in Haverfordwest with a Lidl spokesman adding its store had them installed on Monday.

A spokesman for Marks and Spencer said that the protection for till staff was expected to arrive this week.

“The health and wellbeing of our colleagues and customers comes first for us and we’ve taken a number of measures in stores to protect them.

“Some of these measures include increasing the frequency of cleaning, providing additional hand sanitisers, following social distancing guidelines, including limiting the amount of people in store at any one time, and installing sneeze guards at our till points. We have been working to install the sneeze guards as quickly as possible and they will be delivered to M&S Haverfordwest later this week,” a spokesman added.

Social distancing measures, and a limit on the number of customers in the stores, have been in place at Tesco and Morrisons since last week.