China

A survey of public tender listings on China's internet over the past two weeks showed that hospitals in nearly all of China's cities and provinces are now in the market for ventilators and other equipment used to treat patients seriously ill with Covid-19, RFA reported.

The panic buying has spread outside mainland China's borders, with the generic versions of Tylenol and Advil sold out at drugstores in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and as far as Australia, prompting some local pharmacies to limit sales, CNN reported.

The contention between both the countries has persisted even after Arunachal Pradesh legal recognition as a part of India's sovereign territory through the Shimla agreement of 1914 signed by Great Britain, China and Tibet.

Having to act as a "buffers" between disgruntled citizens and the CCP's image has led to "grassroots fatigue", high workloads and people being put under intense pressure, a team of researchers has found.

Monlam Gyatso, a Tibetan monk, writer and teacher from Raktam village in Qinghai province's Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, had been held for more than a year in an undisclosed location before his sentencing in October earlier this year, sources said, RFA reported.

As China moves away from the grueling lockdowns, mass tracking of citizens and daily testing that characterised Communist Party leader Xi Jinping's zero-Covid policy, a high-ranking official in the party's law enforcement arm said that a family member of his had died recently, and the family had had to wait five days before they could find a cremation slot.

In a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nepal, the Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu sought the former's approval for the signing of the agreement at an opportune time, officials said. An official privy to the matter said that the current government, which turned into a caretaker one after the announcement of elections in the first week of August, is unlikely to sign long-term deals with foreign countries including China.

For nearly three years, the Chinese government has used strict lockdowns, centralised quarantines, mass testing and rigorous contact tracing to curb the spread of the virus, CNN reported. That costly strategy was abandoned earlier this month, following an explosion of protests across the country against stringent restrictions that upended businesses and daily life.

A total of 1,344 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospitals after recovery on the mainland on Sunday, said the NHC in its daily report. Sunday saw two new deaths from Covid-19, with the total death toll at 5,237, reports Xinhua news agency. Chinese news website Caixin reported three deaths, including two state media journalists, after contracting Covid over the weekend. The government, however, did not confirm those.

The latest official figures appear to show a relatively low number of new daily cases. However, there are concerns that these numbers are an underestimate due to a recent reduction in Covid testing, the BBC reported. The government reported only 2,097 new daily cases on Sunday.