Shoppers Loot Supermarket During World’s Strictest Lockdown

A video has revealed the chaos which has ensued amid China's coronavirus lockdown.

While restrictions may have eased in some countries, Shanghai is currently experiencing one of the world's strictest lockdowns amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The city's 26 million residents have been forced to continue lockdown despite initial plans for it to end on Tuesday, 5 April.

Footage uploaded to Twitter has shown the desperate circumstances residents have found themselves in, left without easy access to medicine, other essential items and even food.

Byron Wan took to the platform to share footage of residents at Jiuting community in Sonjiang, Shanghai.

He wrote: "[Residents] apparently couldn’t stand the hunger any more and scoured a supermarket in the neighbourhood for foodstuffs and other supplies, grabbing whatever they can lay their hands on."

The footage reveals a chaotic scene of a supermarket packed full with masked residents, frantically grabbing supplies.

Residents of the city have been instructed to stay at home, banned from even leaving for food. They've been told to wait for deliveries from the Government and if they need to, order supplies themselves in the mean time, The Sun reports.

In response to a user who asked why the Chinese Communist Party isn't taking 'care of all their daily needs,' Wan stated: "Poor planning, poor management, poor execution, and possibly corruption."

Similar sentiments have been echoed across China's microblogging platform, Weibo, The Guardian reports.

One comment stated: "No matter where you live, whether you have money or not, you have to worry about what else you can eat and how you can buy things."

"Do you want to starve the people of Baoshan to death?" another resident wrote.

Despite the strict lockdown measures, the number of new infections has continued to rise. On Friday, 8 April, the city reported 20,398 symptomatic new cases of the virus.

The lockdown measures have also been reinforced by drones. Senior China correspondent for The Economist, Alice Su, reported: "As seen on Weibo: Shanghai residents go to their balconies to sing & protest lack of supplies. A drone appears: “Please comply w covid restrictions. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing.”

Medical volunteers who have travelled to the city to help have also found it difficult to access food.

On TikTok-like Chinese platform Douyin, a female worker said: "Are the supplies just for Shanghai locals? … As an outsider, I can be a volunteer, but why are the goods and supplies not assigned to us?"

The continued lockdown in Shanghai has subsequently been viewed as one of the world's most severe.

Senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, Maya Wang, stated: "The use of the word ‘lockdown’ can be quite imprecise when used in China compared with the rest of the world."

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