Aerial photo taken on Dec. 28, 2021 shows the empty Great Tang All Day Mall in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province. Authorities in Xi'an have upgraded epidemic control and prevention measures starting Monday, ordering all residents to stay indoors and keep away from gatherings except when taking nucleic acid tests.(Photo: Xinhua)

Xi'an, the capital city of Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, entered its seventh day of a lockdown on Wednesday, witnessing helping hands from across the country arriving to ease supply challenges and enhance the medical system's capacity. 

Supplies like instant noodles and masks from Wuhan, Central China's Hubei and Nanyang, Central China's Henan, are arriving in the city of 13 million residents. 

On Tuesday, 150 medics affiliated with Air Force Medical University arrived in Xi'an to help with treatment of COVID-19 patients. 

Xi'an resident Yu Gengzhe, who has 624,000 followers on Sina Weibo, posted that many ambulances on Xi'an streets have license plates from other areas, and many residents' nucleic acid reports were conducted by institutes from other cities. 

The post prompted a strong sense of solidarity, and nationwide help also boosted Xi'an residents' confidence and morale to defeat the virus. 

Xi'an on Wednesday reported 151 new COVID-19 cases, a slight drop from the previous day's 175. The city has started its seventh round of massive nucleic acid testing to screen out the infected. 

At Wednesday's press conference, city authorities said they had streamlined the supply of necessities and worked with logistics firms to enhance distribution and delivery amid public complaints. People spoke of their difficulties in getting vegetables and other necessities since the upgraded controls that began on Monday banned people from picking up deliveries themselves at residential compounds. 

From Wednesday, multiple Xi'an districts also started to distribute free food packages to residents door-to-door. 

Qujiang district coordinated four major supermarkets and a farmer's market to prepare 130 tons of meat, 70 tons of eggs and 650 tons of vegetables to supply 130,000 households, ensuring that at least one supply station is open in each of the 139 residential compounds. 

Yanliang district organized market employees, community staffers and property management personnel to distribute vegetables door-to-door with the assistance of volunteer residents. The standard subsidy is 10 yuan ($1.57) per day per person. 

The Global Times learned from local residents that situations varied among communities, that sometimes deliveries were not timely as compounds were short of people to offer door-to-door services after the upgraded controls banned residents from picking up packages themselves. 

A Xi'an resident in Yanta district, one of the hardest-hit areas in the city, told the Global Times, "There was chaos last week when the lockdown was suddenly imposed and we weren't prepared. The sudden lockdown made online ordering and delivery extremely difficult." 

A resident from Baqiao district told the Global Times that controls in her compound were not that strict because there weren't any cases nearby. They can still order supplies online and pick up the goods at the compound entrance. 

But the sealing off of compounds created troubles for the elderly who are not familiar with online shopping. Hopefully the free food packages can benefit them, the resident said. 

Amid public reports of high food prices, Xi'an market supervision authority urged more than 20 e-commerce chains, including JD, Meituan and Hema Fresh, to crack down on hoarding and enhance delivery services. 

Liang Wannian, head of the experts' panel of COVID-19 response of China's National Health Commission, said that China has a strong and efficient system to respond to epidemics, and when a place faces troubles, the entire country reaches out to help, which is a governance advantage. 

Chinese people also have a strong sense of altruism, Liang said in a recent interview with The Paper.  

Xi'an residents, despite the inconvenience, expressed their understanding of the necessity for the controls to ensure public safety and health, while Western media outlets ignored their own countries' raging Omicron variant outbreaks as they pointed fingers at China's dynamic zero strategy. 

The world is being devoured by the highly infectious Omicron variant — the US surpassed its all-time total for daily new cases, which soared above 512,000, even though many testing centers closed during the Christmas holidays. 

Several European countries, including France, the UK, Italy, Greece and Portugal all set daily records. 

A local resident told the Global Times that Xi'an is very populous and therefore without strict measures, community transmission could soon overwhelm the city's medical resources.