Residents in Shanghai are struggling with food shortages amid a government-imposed lockdown to curb rising COVID-19 cases.
The city of roughly 25 million people was placed on lockdown on March 28, and since then, residents have said they’ve been having difficulty finding meat, rice, and other food supplies, according to ABC News.
“We read on the news there is (food), but we just can’t buy it,” 33-year-old Zhang Yu told the outlet. “As soon as you go to the grocery shopping app, it says today’s orders are filled.”
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Zhang said her household, which consists of eight people, has scaled back meals and has not yet received any government supplies, according to the report.
Shanghai’s lockdown, implemented after 3,500 new COVID-19 cases were reported, has played out in two phases. The first phase locked down the financial district and surrounding areas from Monday to Friday, and the second phase locked down the downtown area for five days beginning on April 1.
“Shanghai’s battle against the epidemic has reached the most critical moment,” Chen Tong, the vice mayor of Shanghai, said in a statement on Thursday, acknowledging that officials should do everything they can to “get living supplies to the city’s 25 million people.” This comes as containers full of food and chemicals have piled up at Shanghai’s ports, as many truckers are unable to pick up the boxes due to the lockdown.
Li Xiaoliang, who has been staying in a hotel room with two co-workers as positive cases have increased, said that they have been forgotten by the government, adding that they need supplies and food. After running through their noodles, Li and his roommates have resorted to eating one meal a day that consists of 40 yuan, or a $6 lunch box, which sometimes doesn’t get delivered, according to the report.
Another resident of Shanghai’s western side, Chen says her home of five people was provided government supplies on March 30 and April 4. While the packages included food such as eggplant, chicken, carrots, broccoli, and potatoes, Chen said that trying to buy meat, fish, and eggs is difficult. “Everyone is organizing to order food, because we can’t count on the government to send it to us,” Chen said.
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The Chinese government reported 23,107 new COVID-19 cases throughout the country on Thursday. Only 1,323 had symptoms, and 329 people in Shanghai had symptoms out of 19,989 new cases.
