The new delivery of hand sanitizer arrived at the Edison pharmacy last Wednesday. Customers cleaned out the entire supply in a matter of hours.

Another delivery came the following day.

“And we ran out Thursday night,” said Manan Cheema, assistant store manager at the Walgreens in Middlesex County.

Surgical masks? The store has been out of stock for nearly a month. Lysol spray? Another hot product flying off the shelves.

“A lot of people have been coming in to buy Lysol,” Cheema said.

Americans have been rushing to stores en masse to stock up on supplies as fears continue to mount over COVID-19. Whether it’s surgical masks, hand sanitizer, toilet paper, bottled water, canned goods or pasta, anything that might hold them over during a quarantine and everything that can kill viruses are in demand at local stores.

Federal health officials’ recent message to Americans that they should prepare for the virus to spread in the U.S. appears to have been heeded. Although New Jersey has no confirmed cases, state officials said on Monday that a person suspected of the virus will undergo testing at the state’s laboratories in West Trenton. Though the sex, age and location of the patient were not released, officials said the person is not hospitalized.

All of this has generated increasing anxiety, angst that has led many Garden State residents to head to stores to stock up on supplies.

Surgical masks seem to be the most sought after product. As of last week, five Home Depot locations in Middlesex County had either run out or were nearly depleted — even after some imposed limits on items per customer.

There have been reports of wholesale stores like Costco, where products can be bought in bulk, selling out their entire stock of bottled water. Massive lines outside those stores have been reported throughout the nation — especially in areas where COVID-19 has spread, such as Washington state. The scenes resemble the reaction during Y2K two decades ago.

An employee at a Central Jersey Costco said her store was out of hand sanitizer and masks and had been running out of water on a daily basis. The store has since restocked after it began to receive daily shipments of water.

Two pharmacies in Jersey City reported selling out of hand sanitizer, surgical masks and Lysol spray. An employee at one of the pharmacies said her store wouldn’t be receiving a new shipment for a couple of days.

Fears have heightened over the past week as COVID-19 began circulating rapidly in Europe and the Middle East. The virus has spread to six continents and nearly 60 countries from Wuhan, China — the epicenter of the crisis.

The novel virus outbreak has infected nearly 90,000 and claimed more than 3,000 lives since December. The U.S. now has 91 confirmed cases, including six deaths.

New York confirmed its first case Sunday night after a woman in her 30s was infected while traveling in Iran. On Saturday, a patient in a Monmouth County hospital was suspected of the virus, but ultimately tested negative for the illness, the New Jersey Department of Health said.

The head of the World Health Organization recently announced that the risk of the virus spreading worldwide was “very high," citing the “continued increase in the number of cases and the number of affected countries.”

Federal health officials say it was only a matter of time before the virus takes a foothold in U.S. A top official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently urged Americans to start preparing.

“We are asking the American public to work with us to prepare for the expectation that this could be bad,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters during a conference call.

“Ultimately, we expect we will see community spread in this country,” Messonnier added. “It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness.”

COVID-19 could turn into a pandemic. In fact, some experts have wondered why the WHO hasn’t declared the crisis a pandemic already.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recommends that before a pandemic, people should store a two-week supply of water and food, regularly check their supply of prescriptions and stock up on over-the-counter medicines, among other measures.

Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerMKent. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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