When people start to bang their pots and scream “ we want supplies” you know its not the Shanghai you used to know. #shanghai #lockdown pic.twitter.com/aAGVZRwhGh
— Aiden Heung/艾登 (@AidenHeung) April 7, 2022
Shanghai residents protest food shortages during COVID-19 lockdown
Desperate Shanghai residents who are under strict lockdown over a COVID-19 outbreak are protesting food shortages, chanting “we want supplies” from their apartments, video shows.
Footage posted to Twitter showed people in the locked-down city banging pots on their balconies to decry a lack of food and other items, France24 reported.
“We want supplies,” the quarantined residents reportedly chanted.
In another video posted to the Chinese social media platform Weibo, a drone appears to warn the residents to cease protesting.
“Please comply with COVID restrictions. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing,” the message from the drone said.
Other footage in recent days has shown residents struggling with security personnel and hazmat-suited medical staff at some compounds, with occupants shouting that they needed food supplies.
Nearly all of Shanghai’s 26 million residents have been confined at home since last week, as the city aims to test, trace and centrally quarantine all people who test positive for the virus amid the spread of the highly infectious Omicron variant.
Only healthcare workers, volunteers, delivery personnel and those with special permission are able to move freely under the “no tolerance” policy.
The strict rules mean that quarantined residents have to order in food or wait for government drop-offs of vegetables, meat and eggs, BBC reported.
Shanghai resident Lucy Lu, 41, said she and her parents had only received one food package handed out by local officials in the past 20 days, the Financial Times reported.
She had started a group chat to buy milk but had to cancel the order after a neighborhood committee declined to arrange couriers out of fear of infections.
The government has acknowledged that there have been delays in distributing supplies.
“It is true there are some difficulties in ensuring the supply of daily necessities,” said Liu Min, the deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce, on Wednesday, the BBC reported.
With Post wires
