Coronavirus: Shanghai’s forgotten elderly rely on help from kind, younger neighbours. It’s a ‘tragedy’ they have to endure

Shanghai’s hundreds of thousands of isolated elderly people have been hit hard by the city’s sudden lockdown and food and medicine shortages

Methods of survival used by others like buying groups are not always available due to technological barriers such as not being able to use smartphones

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A pedestrian pushes an elderly man in a wheelchair on a street in Shanghai, China, On April 12. Photo: Getty

Published: 6:00am, 15 Apr 2022Updated: 10:09am, 15 Apr 2022

When the lockdown was declared in his compound on March 22 due to a positive Covid-19 case, Yang Weimin and his wife, who live alone, only had three to five days’ worth of food at home. The elderly couple, like many Shanghai residents, did not keep weeks or months’ worth of food at home because they always knew they could get food whenever they wanted.

The Yangs, 66 and 59, were caught off guard by the sudden outbreak of the epidemic and the ongoing closure controls: until April 4, the family’s supply of meat, eggs, and milk was cut off for days.

“I had a stroke, and the doctor told me that I needed to eat enough protein every day to keep my body functioning well,” Yang told the South China Morning Post.

However, Yang and his wife had to change their diet from drinking a cup of milk every day to drinking it every other day on the third day after the lockdown, as they watched their food stock slowly decrease without knowing when the lockdown would be lifted.

“If the lockdown lasted a week to 10 days, we could still hang in there,” Yang said. “But it had been over 20 days, and we hadn’t had milk in days until April 4.”

Yang’s 28-year-old daughter, who had been caring for her grandmother, has been quarantined in another compound and is unable to visit them or bring supplies.

The old couple are unable to use smartphones – Yang’s myopia is more than 2000 degrees and his wife had surgery for retinal detachment – the only way for them to get supplies was to wait for the government to distribute food and other essentials, which don’t come often as the city’s logistics infrastructure is under immense strain.

One of the spartan vegetable blind boxes Shanghaiers are trying to survive on. Photo: Handout