Cit­i­zens heed­ed the call of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Sat­ur­day to re­frain from pan­ic buy­ing or hoard­ing gro­ceries, mak­ing a run for gaso­line or drugs and med­i­cine af­ter he an­nounced that a State of Emer­gency will be in ef­fect from mid­night Sat­ur­day.

Even the large coun­try USA is not im­mune from pan­ic buy­ing or hoard­ing. Af­ter the cy­ber­at­tack on Colo­nial Pipeline On May 7, fear of a gas short­age caused many Al­abami­ans to hoard gas, some even us­ing plas­tic bags as makeshift gaso­line con­tain­ers.

The Guardian Me­dia teams went out around 4 pm at var­i­ous su­per­mar­kets, gas sta­tions and drug stores to gauge cit­i­zens' re­ac­tions.

Ac­tiv­i­ty in down­town Port-of-Spain was con­cen­trat­ed along the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade main­ly be­tween Char­lotte Street with its row of su­per­mar­kets, drug stores and bak­eries and Prince Street, but not crowd lev­el.

PriceS­mart, at In­vaders Bay off Au­drey Jef­fers High­way, Port-of-Spain, was sub­dued, no press of crowds.

There was a short line out­side Massy Stores, West­moor­ings, how­ev­er it was man­age­able, well-or­gan­ised and flowed ef­fi­cient­ly with the staff's guid­ance.

Jum­bo Foods, Barataria, Tru Valu, San Juan, and Food Bas­ket, Mt Hope were al­so qui­et.

St Christo­pher's Ser­vice Sta­tion on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, NP Quik Shoppe/Ser­vice Sta­tion, Rich­mond Street had no over­flow­ing ve­hi­cles.

Su­per­Pharm at Guardian Dri­ve, West­moor­ings, had a trick­le of cus­tomers.

Sev­er­al shop­pers at Massy Stores, West­moor­ings spoke to Guardian Me­dia.

Dein­isha Bap­tiste, Diego Mar­tin:

My shop­ping to­day was planned, it wasn't based on any­thing the Prime Min­is­ter would have said. I would be in agree­ment with his state­ment. I don't think tthere's any need for peo­ple to pan­ic buy.

The Gov­ern­ment seems to be do­ing all that it can, it's just for the cit­i­zen­ry to fol­low the guide­lines that the Gov­ern­ment would have put in place.

Michelle, San Fer­nan­do:

I agree peo­ple should not be pan­ic buy­ing at this time, they should make more use of curb­side and de­liv­ery ser­vices. I know that gro­ceries are mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in that area and every­body is work­ing to­geth­er to en­sure pro­to­cols are fol­lowed, but there's on­ly so much we can do when there a flood of peo­ple com­ing for gro­ceries.

The in­vest­ments made by the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors in mov­ing ser­vices on­line is a won­der­ful move. Un­der­stand­ing the why be­hind hoard­ing and pan­ic buy­ing is key.

Fran­cis­co Delph, Mar­aval:

We're just out to get our reg­u­lar month­ly gro­ceries. Shop­ping in PriceS­mart wasn't too busy al­so. I al­ways have an ex­tra tank of LPG gas at home and my car's fu­el lev­el nev­er goes be­low the three-quar­ter mark.

An­drea, Diego Mar­tin:

I just came out for a few items, not to pan­ic buy. I agree with the Prime Min­is­ter. I be­lieve what he's do­ing in try­ing not to make the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion get worse as well as the SOE.