Long Islanders crowd supermarkets, warehouse stores amid coronavirus fears

Long Islanders crowded into supermarkets and warehouse stores Thursday amid coronavirus fears.

Traffic backed up on Broadhollow Road from drivers waiting to enter the parking lot of the Melville Costco. Inside, shoppers waited in long lines with carts bursting with huge packages of toilet paper, bottled water, beer, baby wipes, crackers, cereal, Clorox bleach and other hygiene and non-perishable food items.

At Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace in Melville, Kathy Meller, 59, of South Huntington was buying 16 packages of meat and fish that she planned to freeze. There also were canned soup and canned beans to go along with the frozen vegetables she bought on previous trip.

“I usually eat fresh,” she said. “I have this because they’ll last. I want to stock up just in case.”

Meller said she’s seen the images from Italy, where the entire country is on a lockdown.

“I want to be prepared, so if you’re on a self-quarantine, you’ll be ready,” she said.

Hal White, 73, of Roslyn stocked up on hand sanitizer, soap and disinfectant during the weekend and on Thursday was buying Gatorade, iced tea, rice cakes and a few other non-perishables. But he wasn’t overly worried.

“It’s not like Armageddon has hit,” he said.

Uncle Giuseppe’s, which has a huge area of prepared foods, has seen a spike in purchases of canned and frozen food, bottled water and other items with a long shelf life, said Tom Corbisiero, operations director of the Farmingdale-based eight-store chain.

In the self-serve prepared-food section, spoons are now switched out every half hour, because of concerns about multiple customers touching the same utensil, and disposable gloves are available, said Janet French, head of food safety and sanitation for the stores. An employee wipes down carts and basket handles with a sanitizer.

The store has been able to keep up with the demand for nonperishable food but, like at stores across the Island, the shelves where hand sanitizer and wipes usually sit were empty Thursday afternoon.

“Once those items are back in stock, they don’t last long,” Corbisiero said.

That’s despite a two-item limit on such products. Other supermarket chains with stores on Long Island, such as ShopRite and Stop & Shop, also have limits on the number of products that Stop & Shop called “items that are in high demand … to ensure more of our customers are able to access items they may need.”

By David Olson

david.olson@newsday.com,@DavidOlson11,

David Olson covers health care. He has worked at Newsday since 2015 and previously covered immigration, multicultural issues and religion at The Press-Enterprise in Southern California.