As virus is found, flow of goods keeps life steady

Two workers at a beauty salon in Yantai, Shandong province, have been confirmed with the Delta variant of the coronavirus, the city's health commission said on Tuesday.

One patient, surnamed Gao, used a restroom while waiting for a connecting flight at Lukou International Airport in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, on the way to Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, on July 19.

The other patient, surnamed Ma, took a train on July 12 to Yancheng Railway Station in Jiangsu and then took a tour bus to Yangzhou the next day. Both Yangzhou and Nanjing have recently seen an increase in infections.

In addition, Hubei and Henan provinces also found new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases in the past two days. Provincial health authorities in Hubei reported three new confirmed cases in Wuhan, while in Henan, two new confirmed cases were announced.

Supplies of daily necessities, food and vegetables are abundant in cities hit by the recent outbreak. The 32 supermarkets run by Wushang Group in Wuhan are operating normally, with sufficient supplies and stable prices, The Paper, a news portal, reported on Tuesday.

"We replenish the stores timely to ensure supplies of meat, eggs and vegetables meet demand," a worker at a Wushang supermarket was quoted as saying by The Paper.

To ensure that supplies reach areas where residents are now subject to access controls to curb the spread of coronavirus, business runners are adding delivery efforts on goods — especially rice, flour, meat, eggs and vegetables.

"We have increased supplies to the stores around the closed residential communities. If there is any store running out of stock, we can replenish it within two to three hours," said a staff member at Zhongbai Group in Wuhan.

More than 97 percent of the large-scale malls and supermarkets in Zhengzhou, Henan, that were hit by floods recently, are running as usual with stable prices, the city's commerce bureau said on Monday.

The bureau has allocated 97 delivery vehicles to ensure that ample supplies of daily necessities are provided to residents now under quarantine for COVID-19.

Shi Baoyin in Zhengzhou contributed to this story.