"We should all be ashamed", said national medical director Stephen Powis of the panic buying that has left NHS staff without food.

His words come as it was revealed shoppers bought one billion pounds more worth of food in the past three weeks than usual. 

At a press conference this afternoon, he said: "I would like to make a plea on behalf of all my colleagues in the NHS, nurses, doctors, paramedics and many, many others who are working incredibly hard at the moment to manage this outbreak of coronavirus.

"It's incredibly important that they too have access to food, to those essential supplies that they need."

It comes after an NHS nurse shared a video of herself in tears after she was unable to buy food after a shift.