The organisation said on its Facebook page that following the recent reports of the Coronavirus and mass panic shopping it would like to ask people to consider the effects of such behaviour.

Glasgow NW Foodbank said: “Items have already been limited online. Dried pasta, toilet roll, long-life milk. These are key staples to our foodbank that have been cut off. The food bank places many orders for the people every week. With panic buying we could face no longer being able to do this and it does put the food bank into difficulty.”

The call to stop panic buying and buying in bulk comes as large supermarkets such as Asda and Tesco have seen customers purchasing items such as toilet roll, pasta and long-life milk in bulk due to worries of self-isolation because of the Coronavirus outbreak.

The foodbank warned that without supplies coming into the bank, it cannot keep up with feeding the huge amounts of people which it does every week.

Glasgow NW foodbank continued: “Without supplies coming into the food bank we can’t possibly keep up with feeding the mass amounts of people we do every week. New shopping limits being brought in could make our work so much harder. With the amount of people we feed bulk buying unfortunately is required.”

The organisation said that it would contact stores for help with emergency food provision. It said that hopefully an arrangement could be made to help food banks cope with the high demand.

The foodbank concluded: “Many people also do have the money to bulk buy, but others are less fortunate and cannot afford to mass buy. People can wait a full week just to top up lifeline essentials.”