‘Shanghai was a lesson’ – Beijing residents shop over lockdown fears
Covid-19 virus has ‘stealthily’ spread
Beijing/Shanghai – A mass Covid-19 testing order in Beijing’s biggest district prompted residents in the Chinese capital to stock up on groceries, fearing they could be destined for a lockdown similar to that of Shanghai, which entered a fourth week of bitter isolation.
Authorities in Chaoyang, home to 3.45m people, late on Sunday ordered those who live and work there to be tested three times this week as Beijing warned the virus had “stealthily” spread for about a week before being detected.
Knowing how Shanghai residents struggled to source food and other essentials while locked indoors, shoppers in Beijing crowded stores and online platforms to stock up on vegetables, fresh meat, instant noodles and toilet paper.
A 63-year-old Chaoyang resident surnamed Di bought two bags of vegetables – enough for 8-10 days – just in case his building is added to more than a dozen put under lockdown.
“Shanghai was a lesson,” he said, but doesn’t believe Beijing will suffer the same fate.
In the financial hub, the lack of enough couriers to make deliveries to homes has been the main supply bottleneck, fuelling anxiety and anger.
In Beijing, supermarket chains said they had more than doubled inventories, while Meituan’s grocery-focused e-commerce platform increased stocks and the number of staff for sorting and delivery, state-backed Beijing Daily reported.
China stocks slumped to two-year lows on worries of a potential Beijing outbreak.
Beijing’s case load is small compared with those globally and the hundreds of thousands in Shanghai. Most Chaoyang schools, stores and offices remained open.
The district is home to many wealthy residents, most foreign embassies as well as entertainment venues and corporate headquarters. It has little manufacturing.
In Shanghai, draconian restrictions were still enforced widely across the city, but officials said they would look into reserving the harshest curbs around confirmed cases.
“Every compound, every gate, every door must be strictly managed,” Qi Keping, vice head of Shanghai’s commercial district of Yangpu, told a daily news conference, saying it would “better achieve differentiated prevention.”
At the weekend, authorities sealed off entrances of many public housing blocks and even entire streets with twometre-tall green wire mesh fences, with videos online showing residents protesting from balconies as frustration reached new heights among the city’s 25m residents. Police in hazmat suits have been patrolling the streets, setting up road blocks and asking pedestrians to go home.
While authorities say they have relaxed some curbs, most in Shanghai are still either confined to their homes or cannot leave their residential compounds.
The Shanghai government reported 51 new deaths on April 24, the highest daily tally so far.
That takes the official death toll to 138, all reported from April 17 onwards, although many residents have said relatives or friends died after catching Ccovid-19 as early as March, casting doubt over the statistics.