Police officers, neighborhood committee members and community volunteers dressed in head-to-toe white PPE have been a ubiquitous feature of China’s zero-COVID policy, often shown on social media video uploads surrounding people, beating and dragging them away, or knocking on their door to put pressure on them to submit to a PCR test, to leave home for an isolation camp
A Shanghai resident who gave only the surname Cao recently spoke to RFA’s Mandarin Service about her experiences under weeks of COVID-19 lockdown, during which the city’s 26 million residents submitted on a daily basis to confinement at home
Hundreds of students protested at the weekend on the campus of Peking University (Beida) after a fence was put in place segregating them from the rest of the university, which continues to move around freely
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Ethiopia’s record drought has resulted in a huge surge in desperate parents marryying off their children, with child weddings reported more than doubling this year. Aid organisations are attempting to provide much-needed water and other assistance to drought-stricken households in an attempt to reverse the trend and protect girls
Mysterious fences have begun appearing overnight blocking city thoroughfares in Shanghai amid a grueling COVID-19 lockdown affecting some 26 million people, residents told RFA
Police in the central Chinese province of Hunan have ordered local residents to hand over their passports to police, promising to return them “when the pandemic is over,” amid a massive surge in people looking for ways to leave China or obtain overseas immigration status
The Shanghai lockdown has prompted an exodus of foreign students and teaching staff, as the city reported its first deaths from COVID-19
Public criticism is growing in China of the authorities’ Cultural Revolution-style anti-COVID-19 campaigns after a doctor took his own life over a hospital outbreak and officials killed pets whose owners tested positive for the virus
Malaysian restaurants and other businesses are recovering after two years of dealing with the virus. However, these businesses, like those in other countries, are grappling with severe staffing shortages
While the percentage of persons fully vaccinated against the coronavirus in Kenya has gradually increased to 19 percent, some populations, such as nomadic herders, have been more difficult to reach. As a result, Kenyan officials provided an incentive: herders who received the vaccine also received standard vaccines and medicines for their livestock