Shanghai working to ensure food supply amid lockdown

The Shanghai government has vowed to spare no effort in ensuring that the 25 million residents in the city, which has been completely locked down for a week to curb the spread of COVID-19, will have access to daily necessities.

The current reserves of rice, flour, grains, oil and meat in the municipality are sufficient and efforts have been made to secure more vegetables and pork from other regions, said Chen Tong, vice-mayor of the city and the head of the supplies security team under the city's leading group for epidemic prevention and control.

"We've noticed that the difficulty lies in the fact that the supplies cannot reach homes as supermarkets and farmers' markets are still unable to operate normally due to epidemic control. The distribution capacity of e-commerce platforms has also dropped significantly," said Chen at a municipal press briefing on Thursday.

"We're making efforts to solve the problems of low efficiency in procurement and distribution, the lack of platforms providing daily supplies, and the insufficient manpower and transportation capacity," he said.

Chen added that the city is establishing a mechanism that would guarantee the provision of supplies to people with urgent or special needs, and that residential neighborhood management teams will identify vulnerable groups, such as the elderly, pregnant women, infants, and those with disabilities, and implement tailored supply plans for them.

Shanghai started a citywide lockdown on April 1 after a partial lockdown in the regions east of the Huangpu River since March 28.