(Yicai Global) April 18 -- Chinese e-commerce platform JD.Com has brought couriers from other regions to help Shanghai residents secure enough groceries and power through the longer-than-expected lockdown due to rising Covid-19 cases.

"Tired but fulfilled," are the words that delivery guy Yang Yongsheng used to describe how he was doing. Yang has been working in Shanghai for four days after leaving Anhui province. On April 13, he signed up when his Hefei branch was recruiting a team of workers to drive 29 trucks full of supplies to Shanghai which has been in citywide lockdown since April 1.

Yang's answer could be explained by a lack of sleep. The courier had woken up at 5 a.m. that morning after finishing work at midnight the previous day.

After arriving in the eastern megalopolis, Yang’s team was assigned to the Shanghai Songjiang Sorting Center. What was inside the warehouse looked "like a hill, and we had to make our way out," said Yang as the lockdown had caused a large backlog of deliveries. Now the pile is gone.

The lockdown has prompted logistics companies to make more important decisions. Fresh products with a short shelf life and drugs are prioritized for delivery, and the rest will be transported in chronological order, explained Yang.

The job is physical. Yang’s duties include loading and transporting goods. Workers need to cooperate to move orders manually into a truck, which might take an hour.

Delivery workers are some of the few people who can still walk on the streets of Shanghai. But not without proper credentials. Workers need to get tested for Covid-19 every day and show their test certificates when entering each community. Consequently, rides take longer, usually about four hours. On April 16, Yang finished three such rounds of delivering orders.

Couriers who lift heavy bags of groceries and medical supplies also need to cope with the heat as each employee needs to wear protective clothing to work. On April 16, Yang had to change his suit three times.

But Yang will not have to do the heavy work alone. The e-commerce firm is bringing more delivery workers to the city from Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, he concluded.

Editor: Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi