Covid hits supermarket shelves as the ‘RAT’ race continues

By Margaret Dekker

The CEO of a major Australian supermarket has advised customers Covid-19 will impact supermarket shopping as we know it.
Brad Banducci, Woolworths Group CEO wrote to shoppers the supermarket is ‘entering a very different phase of COVID’ due to the high levels of community transmission associated with ‘the Omicron hump.’

“When you’re shopping with us at the moment, you might unfortunately have noticed gaps on shelf, or substitutions in your online order. Unlike the surge buying of early 2020 (who could forget the toilet paper), this is because of the number of people in our supply chain in isolation – from suppliers to truck drivers and distribution centre team members – which in turn is causing material delays to store deliveries. To give you a sense of the magnitude of the challenge, we are experiencing COVID-driven absences of 20%+ in our distribution centres and 10%+ in our stores,

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NSW is currently the most affected, although we are seeing impacts across the whole country, and it’s not yet clear how soon the system will come back into balance as we move through the Omicron wave.”
The Woolworths chief acknowledged the frustration shoppers would be experiencing, ‘when you can’t find the product you’re looking for’ and said the company was working hard,
“.. to get all products back on shelf as quickly as we can (including Rapid Antigen Tests.)”
“In the meantime, we have more than enough stock in the system and plenty more coming. We also have good supply within each ‘category’ of product (even if your favourite isn’t available, a good alternative hopefully should be), so it really helps if you can be flexible with the choices you make. We would of course also ask you to keep shopping as you normally would and to continue to show kindness to our teams,” Brad Banducci, Woolworths CEO, wrote to shoppers late last week.
The advice comes as Rapid Antigen Tests for in-home testing of Covid-19 continue to elude customers across the Northern Rivers.
A dedicated website to ‘Find a RAT’ was launched last week “helping you find those sneaky RATs” in retailers across the region, however the site failed to ‘get a bite’ anywhere in the region with no stock available in any major centres including Tweed Heads, Byron, Ballina, or Grafton according to the website (at the time of going to print.)
The ‘RAT race’ continues, as state and Federal Governments are still yet to announce the date Rapid Antigen Tests will become free and available, as promised, for countless Australians in growing need.