Easier online shopping with restored warehouses, logistics, says official
A supermarket staff member prepares products for customers and online orders.
Shanghai's e-commerce network has gradually restored operations with more delivery staff returning to work and warehouses reopened, according to the city's commerce commission.
Forty-two central e-commerce warehouses, or some 95 percent of the city's total, have reopened, while 779 secondary warehouses, 66 percent of the total, have restored services, said Liu Min, deputy director of the commission on Saturday.
More than 18,000 delivery staff are whizzing across local streets to deliver 1.8 million online orders to citizens, Liu told the city's daily coronavirus press briefing.
"The online shopping difficulty during the pandemic is mainly due to the large number of locked-down delivery staff and suspended warehouses," Liu said.
The "bottlenecks" are being broken to enhance the delivery capacity of the e-commerce platforms, she added.
To ensure supplies, e-commerce platforms have been allocating food and life necessities from outside Shanghai. Meituan, for instance, has organized more than a dozen depots to transport vegetables, milk and meats to local communities directly.
Kunshan in neighboring Jiangsu has allowed a smoother daily supply transport channel to Shanghai. JD has delivered some 4,200 tons of necessities to Shanghai through the channel, Liu said.
Delivery staff pick up online orders for residents in nearby communities.
Retail chain Freshippo launched its mobile supermarket which has delivered more than 60,000 orders to local communities. It has also sent 20 tons of life necessities to 15,000 seniors above 75 years old who live alone.
As of Friday, a total of 1,011 local supermarkets have reopened. The number of staff has also increased by 37 percent comparing with several days ago.
Nearby residents can order food or life necessity packs from the reopened offline stores through their neighborhood committees or apps. Third-party courier firms will deliver to their communities, according to Liu.
Carrefour, for instance, has been working together with Dazhong Logistics to serve over 300 residential compounds with 40 minivans of the logistic firm. The daily orders, under such cooperation, have increased by 38 percent to several days ago.
Liu said the commission has promoted the cooperation mode to other supermarkets such as Freshippo, Yonghui, CR Vanguard and Walmart. About 500 logistic vehicles will be put into use.
Two local state-owned enterprises, Bright and Bailian groups, who have been asked to ensure daily supplies for the special groups in Puxi and Pudong, have cooperated with Shanghai Post to enhance the delivery capacity.
A total of 761 supermarkets of Bailian, or some 60 percent of the group's total, have reopened and 20 percent of their employees have returned to work, said Pu Shaohua, president of Bailian Group.
A supermarket staff member prepares products for customers and online orders.
Other outlets under lockdown have been asked to keep accepting online orders from nearby communities and arrange logistics for the residents, he added.
Furthermore, three key daily necessity transport centers have been established in the key wholesale markets in Pinghu of neighboring Zhejiang, Kunshan of neighboring Jiangsu and Shanghai's Xijiao, or western suburb. Drivers from outside Shanghai can unload cargo at the centers under close-loop and touchless management, according to Liu.
The city reported 3,590 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 19,923 local asymptomatic infections on Friday, a slight increase to that of Thursday.
Thirteen COVID-19 patients, 11 males and two females, among Shanghai's surging number of infections are in a serious condition, mostly seniors with underlying diseases and without coronavirus vaccination, said Wu Qianyu, director of Shanghai Health Commission.
Apart from a 33-year-old patient, all the other cases in severe condition are between 70 and 93 years old. They all have serious underlying diseases and none of them has taken the COVID-19 vaccine, Wu said.
Meanwhile, 969 local COVID-19 cases were discharged from local designated hospitals upon recovery on Friday, while 19,800 other cases completed central quarantine and medical observation.
A supermarket warehouse piled with food and vegetables.
