AS COVID-19 began to spread across America shoppers rushed to stock up on pasta, hand-sanitiser and loo roll. Other things equal, that should be good news for purveyors of these and other essentials. But other things are not equal: social-distancing restrictions have disrupted retailers' supply chains and their operations. Amazon, whose e-commerce empire reported record sales in the first quarter, booked lower profits as a result of ballooning pandemic-related expenses. Could Walmart, with a quarter of America's grocery market, 5,000-plus stores and 1.5m employees in America, including 235,000 temporary ones hired to cope with corona-virus-fuelled demand, cope any better with the pandemic?
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