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Beibei sleeps beside thousands of strangers in rows of cots in a high-ceilinged exhibition center. The lights stay on all night, and the 30-year-old real estate saleswoman has yet to find a hot shower. 

Beibei and her husband were ordered into the massive National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai last Tuesday after spending 10 days isolated at home following a positive test. Their 2-year-old daughter, who was negative, went to her grandfather, while her nanny also went into quarantine.

The convention center, with 50,000 beds, is among more than 100 quarantine facilities set up in Shanghai for people such as Beibei who test positive but have no symptoms. It is part of official efforts to contain China’s biggest coronavirus outbreak since the 2-year-old pandemic began, Associated Press reported.

Residents show “no obvious symptoms,” Beibei, who asked to be identified only by her given name, told The Associated Press in an interview by video phone.

“There are people coughing,” she said. “But I have no idea if they have laryngitis or omicron.”

The shutdown of Shanghai, which confined most of its 25 million people to their homes, is testing patience of people who are increasingly fed up with China’s “zero-COVID” policy that aims to isolate every case.

“At the beginning people were frightened and panicked,” Beibei said. “But with the publication of daily figures, people have started to accept that this particular virus is not that horrible.”

Beibei was told she was due to be released Monday after two negative tests while at the convention center. 

Most of Shanghai shut down starting March 28. That led to complaints about food shortages and soaring economic losses, according to the Associated Press.

Anyone who tests positive but shows few or no symptoms is required to spend one week in a quarantine facility. Beibei said she had a stuffy nose and briefly lost part of her senses of taste and smell, but those symptoms passed in a few days.

On Monday, the government reported 23,460 new cases on the Chinese mainland — only 2,742 of which had symptoms. Shanghai accounted for 95% of the total, or 22,251 cases, including 2,420 with symptoms.

The city has reported more than 300,000 cases since late March. Shanghai began easing restrictions last week, though a health official warned the city didn’t have its outbreak under control.

At the convention center, residents are checked twice a day for fever and told to record health information on mobile phones, according to Beibei. 

Most pass the time by reading, square dancing, taking online classes or watching videos on mobile phones.

The 420,000-square-meter (4.6 million-square-foot) exhibition center is best known as the site of the world’s biggest auto show. Other quarantine sites include temporary prefabricated buildings, Associated Press reported.

Residents of other facilities have complained about leaky roofs, inadequate food supplies and delays in treatment for medical problems.

“We haven’t found a place with a hot shower,” Beibei said. “Lights are on all night, and it’s hard to fall asleep.”

A video obtained by AP showed wet beds and floors due a leaky roof in a different facility in a prefabricated building.

“Bathrooms are not very clean” at the NECC, Beibei said. “So many people use them, and volunteers or cleaners can’t keep up.”

Nepal is asking citizens living abroad to deposit funds in domestic banks as part of efforts to ensure the financial system has enough liquidity and to preserve foreign exchange reserves, finance minister Janardan Sharma said on Saturday, Reuters reported.

Speaking to Reuters, he denied Nepal was facing an economic crisis despite the impact of soaring commodity prices as the tourist industry, a key source of revenues, struggles to recover after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nepal, wedged between China and India, this month imposed curbs on luxury goods imports to rein in capital outflows. Foreign exchange reserves fell over 18% to $9.6 billion as of mid-March from mid-July - enough for around six months imports.

By depositing their savings in Nepal, overseas Nepalis would continue to "maintain their link as well as benefit from 6 to 7% interest" offered by Nepali banks, Sharma said, according to Reuters.

Sharma said the economy did not face a crisis and Nepal's situation could not be compared with Sri Lanka. That South Asian country is facing its worst economic crisis in decades and anti-government protests.

In Nepal, remittances by overseas workers, which constitute nearly a quarter of the economy and are crucial for external payments, fell 3.0% to $5.3 billion between mid-July to mid-March, compared with a 5% increase in the same period a year earlier.

Earnings from tourism, which fell sharply after the start of the pandemic in 2020, are slowly picking up, but remain well below pre-COVID levels, Reuters reported.

Sharma said if 100,000 Nepali nationals living abroad deposited $10,000 each in Nepali banks it could go a long way to help Nepal overcome the current liquidity constrains.

Nepal has also decided to accept $659 million in aid from the United States and about $150 million in soft loan from the World Bank, Sharma said.

"The money to be received from the United States over five years is a (non-refundable) grant," he said, according to Reuters.

Nepal reported 12 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 2, 750 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 11 returned positive. Likewise, 739 people underwent antigen tests, of which one was tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that 36  infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 375 active cases in the country.

South Korea reported 93,001 new COVID-19 cases as of midnight Saturday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 16,305,752, the health authorities said Sunday, Xinhua reported.

The daily caseload was down from 107,916 recorded in the previous day and far lower than 164,456 a week earlier, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

The health authorities believed that the daily caseload has been on the decline following the resurgence, driven by the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant and its subvariant BA.2, which peaked in mid-March.

Among the new cases, 18 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 31,585.

The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 893, down 20 from the previous day, according to Xinhua.

A total of 203 more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 21,092. The total fatality rate was 0.13 percent.

The number of people who received two doses of COVID-19 vaccines was 44,526,471, or 86.8 percent of the total population, and the figure for those getting booster jabs was 33,008,629, or 64.3 percent of the population, Xinhua reported.