Should we be alarmed that China has asked to stock up on basic necessities due to the pandemic?

China has asked families to do “efforts to ensure the provision of food” amid the outbreaks of COVID-19 now active in different parts of the country, which have caused partial and total confinements in some cities.

The Ministry of Commerce urged in a statement the families to “to stockpile basic necessities in case of emergencies”, in addition to asking the local authorities to guarantee the supply of food and to do everything possible to keep prices stable. This note, which generated some alarm due to the unexpectedness of the announcement, had to be explained by the authorities: “The original intention of the announcement is preventing the outbreak of the pandemic from catching people off guard“, The Economic Daily published this Tuesday the state newspaper, that assures that the people should not misinterpret it.

The same medium indicates that the notification aims to “ensure that citizens do not have problems if a lockdown is imposed in their area”. It also seeks that citizens “increase awareness when facing emergencies” since “many people ran out of food at home after their residential complexes closed due to COVID cases. ”

At this time, China is fighting a regrowth associated with the delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that the authorities are trying to appease with their usual recipe, consisting of partial or total confinements in some cities, travel restrictions and several rounds of nucleic acid tests in different parts of the country.

In its last part published today, the country’s National Health Commission announced the detection of 71 new cases of the virus54 of them due to local contagion, affecting at least 16 regions of the country. Likewise, the total number of active infected in mainland China amounts to 912, 35 of which are serious.