Shanghai has found new problems buried deep beneath the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak. With more than 26 million people asked to stay indoors, food has become a sore point for many in the Chinese city.

Most supermarkets in the city have been ordered to stay shut and home deliveries have been significantly crunched down, inducing a food shortage fear in the masses. According to reports from Reuters, people in the city have been scrambling for food.

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Authorities too have been struggling, but “working hard”, to take care of the “basic living needs” of the people who have been struggling in the mass lockdown. 

Liu Min, a senior official from Shanghai’s commerce commission, said that authorities were working on building emergency supply stations in Shanghai and shipping necessary supplies from other cities. However,  delivering these supplies to doorsteps was the biggest challenge, Liu Min said in a statement to Reuters.

In order to solve the issue of delivering supplies to homes, Shanghai authorities also plan to “release delivery capacity” by allowing nearly 11,000 riders who work for major e-commerce platforms to get to work. However, the delivery personnel would need to submit a negative COVID nucleic acid and antigen test on a daily basis.

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Shanghai remains under complete lockdown to fight China’s latest outbreak, now well into the second week of what originally was publicized as a two-stage measure lasting just eight days. Officials say they will decide on further measures after analyzing the results of tests on more than 25 million city residents.

Shanghai on Wednesday reported another 17,077 cases detected over the previous day, all but 311 of them people who showed no symptoms. The city requires all those who test positive but are asymptomatic to be held in designated locations for observation, along with their close contacts.