As the number of cases of COVID-19 (coronavirus) rise throughout Australia and on the Mid North Coast, so too have claims of organised supermarket hoarding by "bus loads of tourists".
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These unfounded claims have been spreading on Kempsey social media pages over the past week.
So, are bus loads of people coming to Kempsey to strip our supermarket shelves of stock? It seems highly unlikely.
The stories of tourists turning up in country towns to buy out their supermarkets is not just happening here, there have been similar reports in Mudgee, Ballarat and closer to home, in Nambucca Heads.
Local supermarkets have made no reports of this happening in Kempsey.
Reporters from the Mudgee Guardian, the Ballarat Courier and the Nambucca Guardian have also called their local stores in their areas and have found no confirmation of the rumours.
The Kempsey Police were contacted by the Argus to confirm whether they had moved people on from a Kempsey supermarket, as some social media comments suggest. However, police said there had not been bus loads of people turning up in Kempsey and officers have not had to remove anyone from local supermarkets.
There was one incident of a store manager asking four people to leave their store due to stockpiling of items, Kempsey Police have confirmed.
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