Shanghai’s ongoing coronavirus lockdown, covering a total of 25 million residents, has sparked concerns over food shortage. China has extended coronavirus restrictions in a bid to squash recent outbreaks. 

Shanghai-based Bloomberg reporter Allen Wan said: “I’m here in my apartment in Shanghai on the last day, the supposed last day of my lockdown.

“But it looks like it’s going to be extended and my biggest concern right now is food.

“We’re running short of everything and I want to give you a little peek inside my refrigerator.

Showing viewers the contents of his fridge, Mr Wan added: “It may not look so bad, but I gotta tell you a lot of stuff is pretty old, got milk here the expiration date is April 1.”

“The bread expiration date is March 30 and today is April 6,” he continued.

“Thank God I still have a little bit of wine because I think I’m going to need it.”

Mr Wan added: “So the biggest concern right now for people is how to get food for us. We have to order online through this one grocery app called Dingdong Maicai.

“Basically in the evening after 9pm you go into the app and see what’s available.”

Demonstrating the app, the reporter noted: “As you can see a lot of food meat and vegetables are already gone.

“The big problem seems to be we can’t get groceries delivered to our apartment because there’s a lack of drivers delivering food in general because of the lockdown.”

Shanghai’s outbreak has surpassed 130,000 cases in total, far exceeding the approximately 50,000 symptomatic cases recorded in the original outbreak in the central city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, although Chinese authorities did not start reporting asymptomatic cases until after Wuhan’s peak.

Stories of crowded and unsanitary central quarantine centres and fears of family separation have driven calls for home quarantine in Shanghai.

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The Shanghai government has started allowing some close contacts to isolate at home and on Wednesday eased its policy of separating infected children from their parents.

However, food supply remains a concern with residents, due to a shortage of couriers.

On Friday afternoon results for hashtag “Shanghai buy food” were blocked on the Twitter-like social media site Weibo.

Shanghai has not indicated when it may lift its lockdown.