As Covid-19 cases surge in Shanghai, residents face shortage of essentials amid harsh lockdown
The curbs have impacted the supply of food and other necessary items as most of the supermarkets in the city have been shut.
China reported 3,472 locally transmitted Covid-19 cases and 20,782 asymptomatic infections on Thursday, PTI reported.
The city of Shanghai, which has been under a lockdown since March 28, remained the epicentre of the new cases. The city reported 3,200 locally transmitted infections, and 19,872 asymptomatic cases on Thursday.
The surge in cases in the country is driven by the Omicron variant, which was first detected in November. This was in spite of Beijing’s strict “zero tolerance” policy for the disease which involves strict lockdowns, mass testing and travel bans.
The curbs have impacted the supply of food and other essential items as most of the supermarkets in Shanghai have been shut as well. The restrictions have led to anger among the residents and grocery stores have been looted. Visuals of citizens screaming from their homes in frustration and anguish have also emerged, according to the South China Morning Post.
The elderly population have been among the worst hit due to the shortage of essentials. Nearly 58 lakh citizens in Sanghai are above 60, the newspaper reported, citing the Shanghai elderly population and ageing business monitoring statistics. Residents are relying on groups on messaging platform WeChat and self-organised purchase groups in the community to buy food to support the elderly population.
“It’s not a warm and lovely story of neighbours helping neighbours or young people helping the elderly,” Wang Haoyu, a 27-year-old who arranges food for his elderly neighbour told the South China Morning Post. “It’s a tragedy that the elders can only get food because I help them.”
The city authorities have converted residential complexes into quarantine centres to accommodate the rising number of positive cases, Reuters reported. However, this has sparked more outrage with residents in neighbouring houses being worried about contracting the infection.
Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday said the government will continue following the zero-case policy.
“Given that the global Covid pandemic situation is still grave, we must never relax our response,” he said, according to PTI. “We must always put the people and their lives first, adhere to the principle of guarding against imported cases and domestic resurgences, and follow a science-based, targeted approach and zero-Covid policy.”