Officials ordered some Shanghai neighborhoods to throw away food they received from the government after complaints about quality issues, adding to frustration among residents locked in their homes for weeks as the city struggles to tame the country’s worst COVID-19 outbreak.
At least two districts in Shanghai’s east warned residents about problems with moldy braised duck and meatballs or issues with the packaging of food that had been distributed by the government to compounds still in lockdown, official notices seen by Bloomberg News showed.
Some residents complained on social media about stomachaches and diarrhea after eating food they had received on Wednesday. It was one of the top topics on China’s Internet yesterday, with the hashtag of netizens calling for a probe garnering more than 100 million views on Sina Weibo.
Photo: Bloomberg
Authorities have said they would investigate the issue.
Shanghai’s response to a record COVID-19 outbreak has been to impose an unprecedented lockdown that has brought a hefty social and economic toll to the financial hub. It has also spiraled into a logistical nightmare as the city’s 25 million residents — sealed off in their homes for several weeks — struggled to order basic groceries and government packages were not reliably delivered.
The simmering anger has also led to some of the strongest anti-government criticism in years from a public growing weary of harsh virus measures.
On WeChat, posts about moldy marinated duck from a manufacturer whose license has expired, and cooking oil and meatballs made by little-known producers, have circulated since Wednesday.
Pudong District, in Shanghai’s east and covering its financial district and industrial parks, has opened a probe into problems with government-distributed food packages. In the southwestern district of Minhang, two local government officials were fired earlier this week over sub-quality pork delivered to communities.
A retailer responsible for providing food to a western area yesterday issued a letter apologizing for the quality of rice noodles it distributed for the government.
“The market regulator will investigate and punish this kind of violation strictly and fast,” Tao Ailian, an official at Shanghai’s market regulator, said at a briefing on Wednesday.
The regulator has issued guidance for procuring and distributing the fresh food packages, requiring organizers and producers to ensure food safety.
The fresh gripes over food supply come as the daily case tally moderates, but deaths increase. Infections have fallen for four consecutive days to 18,495 yesterday.
Another eight people died, bringing fatalities in the current wave to 25. The number of patients in severe or critical condition tripled to 159.
While Shanghai has made tentative moves to ease restrictions in some sectors, including allowing some factories to restart operations, there is no indication of when the lockdown would be fully lifted.
About two-thirds of the city’s population remain under a lockdown that initially started in the city’s east late last month.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS