A staff member replenishes the shelves at a supermarket in Tonghua, northeast China's Jilin Province, Jan. 18, 2021. Local authorities have been paying attention to the supply of food in efforts to prevent and control COVID-19. (Xinhua/Xu Chang)

 
The mayor of Tonghua, Northeast China's Jilin Province, has vowed to deliver daily necessities to all 110,000 families in locked-down areas by Monday, amid criticism of slow deliveries of necessities during lockdown. 

Mayor Li Ping said that since Sunday the city government has organized 7,000 local officials and volunteers and about 600 vehicles to deliver goods to local residents.
 
The city’s stores of food, including rice, meat and vegetables are able to support a 14-day lockdown, Li noted.    

Some 73,000 Tonghua families in locked-down areas received daily necessities by 3 pm Monday and the other 37,000 families are expected to receive needed food stuffs before Tuesday, Li told CCTV. 

The city had arranged measures to guarantee daily necessities deliveries when launching the lockdown, but the measures failed to reach expected efficiency as too much orders flooded the online platform at the same time, and there was a lack of community workers to deliver goods as some of them were also in lockdown.   

To stabilize market prices, the Tonghua government is also taking measures to control the price of daily necessities like meat, eggs and rice, to ensure the differential between purchase and sale prices is no more than 25 percent, according to the government website.   

Tonghua is the worst-hit city in Jilin, with a total of 246 infections as of Sunday, including 196 confirmed and 50 asymptomatic cases. 

Tonghua sealed off all communities on Wednesday amid a surge in COVID-19 infections, following which local residents complained online about the lack of food caused by late deliveries during the lockdown.