A deputy mayor in a city in northeastern China has apologised after residents complained about a lack of food and essentials during the lockdown imposed to contain the latest coronavirus outbreak.
Some residents in Tonghua in Jilin province, a city of more than 2 million people that entered a lockdown last Monday, vented their frustration on social media over a shortage of groceries, a rise in food prices and a lack of medicines.
One posted on Weibo: “There are 50 packs of veggies for 1,000 people. Supermarkets are open with stock but we are not allowed to buy anything. The hotline is set up but no one answers the phone.
”We have no option but to seek help online. We would not complain after starving for just one or two days. We didn’t have enough time to stock up after the sudden lockdown announcement.”
”I sincerely apologise on behalf of the government for not being able to deliver daily necessities in time for our citizens and for causing inconvenience to everyone’s lives,” Tonghua’s deputy mayor Jiang Haiyan said at a press conference on Sunday.
Starting this week, Tonghua residents will be supplied with half-price “vegetable packages” to sustain them for five days, local authorities said in an official announcement. Over 7,000 cadres and volunteers will be assembled to distribute the foodstuffs to residents, and citywide nucleic acid testing will begin Monday.
However, not everyone in Dongchang District — which local authorities designated a “high-risk” area last week — has seen these vows bear fruit. While the vegetable packages were being delivered as promised to large residential complexes, some smaller communities are still waiting.
Jilin reported 67 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, 56 of them in the city of Tonghua, taking the province’s total for the current outbreak to 273 known active infections.
