Shanghai’s elderly get more pandemic help

Governments, communities and major State-owned enterprises are helping people with special needs — especially seniors living alone, the sick and the disabled — to tide over the recent COVID-19 resurgence in Shanghai.

According to Shen Min, deputy director of the Shanghai bureau of civil affairs, these groups face more challenges amid closed-loop management. The bureau and related departments are improving the job of taking proper care of these people through prioritizing a threepronged strategy including complete acknowledgement of their difficulties and appeals, a timely response to the shortage of daily supplies and delivery to their doorsteps.

Seniors account for a major part of the vulnerable. Bureau statistics show that about 120,000 seniors aged 80 or above were living alone in the city during the lockdown in April.