Iceland has issued an alarming warning to every customer who shops in its stores.
The frozen food supermarket is facing staff shortages and empty shelves due to the so-called 'pingdemic' after staff and workers have been forced to self-isolate.
Iceland said it has been forced to close some stores due to 1,000 staff getting a notification from contact tracing apps and being told to stay at home.
Iceland's boss said around 4 per cent of its workforce were currently off work due to coronavirus.
Managing director Richard Walker told the BBC: "We have got over 1,000 people absent due to Covid, that's the highest ever since testing began.
"It's about 4% of our total workforce of 30,000."
The Iceland boss then added: "In fact, we have just announced employing an additional 2,000 people on top of that to give us a deeper pool of labour, because so many people are now getting pinged."
M&S has also warned of potential staff shortages due to an increase in people being pinged by the track and trace app.
The boss of Marks and Spencer, Steve Rowe, said by mid-August as many as one in five supermarket workers could be in home isolation.
He said: “If there’s shortages we’ll have to manage it by changing hours of stores [and] reducing hours."
It comes as shoppers have been urged not to panic buy after supplies to local shops have seen a huge hit caused by a lack of workers told to self-isolate due to the contact tracing app.
The phrase "pingdemic" is being thrown around, which is a play on words made up of the terms “pandemic” and “ping”, referring to being notified by the NHS app on your phone.
Those who have been 'pinged', in Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales, have to then stay home and isolate for a certain number of days.
It's resulted in staff shortages and disruption in industries where people cannot easily work from home, including in supermarkets.
