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Almost one million people in a suburb of Wuhan - China's central city where the coronavirus was first recorded - have been placed under lockdown, BBC reported.

Jiangxia district residents have been ordered to stay inside their homes or compounds for three days after four asymptomatic Covid cases were detected.

China follows a "zero Covid" strategy, including mass testing, strict isolation rules and local lockdowns.

This has resulted in far fewer deaths than in many other countries.

But the strategy is facing growing opposition as people and businesses continue to face the strain of restrictions.

In Wuhan, a city of 12 million people, regular testing uncovered two asymptomatic cases two days ago.

Two more cases were found through contact tracing, and shortly after the lockdown order was issued.

Wuhan became known around the world in early 2020 as the first place scientists detected the new coronavirus - and the first city to be put under harsh restrictive measures. 

At the time, the wider world was shocked by the strict lockdown, but many cities and countries were soon forced to impose their own similar measures, according to BBC.

Later, China became known as a Covid success story, with restrictions lifted much earlier than in many other countries. 

But that has changed again, with China pursuing a "zero Covid" strategy resulting in frequent local lockdowns, rather than trying to live with the virus as in most other countries. 

Last month, Shanghai - China's giant financial capital with nearly 25 million residents - finally emerged from a strict two-month lockdown, though residents are adapting to a "new normal" of frequent mass testing. 

A rising number of Chinese companies and factory production lines are maintaining a closed-loop system in order to follow the goal of completely eliminating Covid.

In order to keep parts of the economy open, employees have been told to live temporarily in their workplaces to minimise contact between work and home.

Earlier this week, scientists said there was "compelling evidence" that Wuhan's Huanan seafood and wildlife market was at the centre of the Covid outbreak.  

Two peer-reviewed studies re-examined information from the initial outbreak in the city.

One of the studies shows that the earliest known cases were clustered around that market. The other uses genetic information to track the timing of the outbreak. 

It suggests there were two variants introduced into humans in November or early December 2019, BBC reported.

Together, the researchers said this evidence suggests that the virus was present in live mammals that were sold at Huanan market in late 2019. 

They said it was transmitted to people who were working or shopping there in two separate "spill-over events", where a human contracted the virus from an animal.

One of the researchers involved, virologist Prof David Robertson from the University of Glasgow, told BBC News that he hoped the studies would "correct the false record that the virus came from a lab".

China has seen more than 2.2 million cases and 14,720 deaths since the pandemic began in 2019, according to America's Johns Hopkins University, according to BBC.

It has to be the most brazen incident of corruption by a local government. In its financial details for the fiscal year 2020/21 presented to the Office of the Auditor General (OAG), Janakpur Sub-metropolitan City presented a ridiculous bill of Rs 710,000 for feeding 803kg meat to the local representative during its two-day city council meeting.

The breakdown of the expenses is thus: the meeting participants consumed 653 kg of mutton worth Rs 653,000 and 150 kg of chicken worth Rs 57,000. There is no mention of how many people attended the two-day extravaganza; there must have been a lot, one can imagine, since the cooking staff were paid a handsome Rs 125,000 for their trouble.  

The meeting was reportedly televised live as well and for this, Janaki TV had charged Rs 15,000.

Then there was the expense incurred while buying ceremonial shawls (360 units of them) for the meeting participants that ate Rs 142,000 from the event’s budget. The local government of Janakpur also seemed to have spent generously (upward of Rs 700,000) to ply the meeting attendees with snacks and cold drinks.  

The sub-metropolis had allocated Rs 5m for the event of which Rs 4.38m was spent, according to the financial details.

This is just one instance of apparent financial misappropriation committed the local representatives of Janakpur city. The annual OAG report is chock full of expense details that do not add up.

The city has presented a bill of Rs 2.3m under the heading of mosquito control program. If you ask Janakpur residents, they only remember the city workers fogging the streets and neighborhoods a couple of times. The city had allocated Rs 4m for mosquito control.

Sudarshan Singh, former chair of one of the city wards, blames former mayor Lalkishor Sah for all the financial discrepancies. He says Sah and his people “were never transparent on how the city was spending its budget”. Millions of rupees were spent during the inaugural session of the city council meeting alone but no one knows the exact figure.

Former mayor Sah is also accused of wasting the city’s budget to publish a book about cultural heritages of Janakpur.  Rs 483,000 were released for the publication of 528 units of the said book. Many were miffed when the book came out for its inferior quality. Worse still, it had the name of Sah’s son emblazoned on its cover.

Incumbent Janakpur Mayor Manoj Kumar Sah agrees his predecessor had not been transparent in city’s expenses while vowing to “play by the rules, be transparent and cut back unnecessary spending”.

The National Examination Board (NEB) published the results of the Secondary Education Examination (SEE) by organizing a press conference on Wednesday.

According to the NEB’s member secretary Durga Prasad Aryal, 22, 640 students did not attend the examinations. He said that 3, 280 students secured 0.8 to 1.2 GPA.

Similarly, the number of students graduating with 1.2 to 1.6 GPA stood at 44, 586 while 100, 594 managed to get 1.6 to 2. 0 GPA.

Likewise, 112, 733 students got 2.0 to 2.4 GPA and 90, 598 secured 2.4 to 2.8 GPA.

Aryal said that 69, 000 students managed to secure 2.8 to 3.2 GPA while 41, 627 secured 3.2 to 3.6 GPA.

According to the NEB, the number of students securing 3.6 to 4 GPA stood at 9, 633.

Nepal reported 564 new Covid-19 cases and one death on Wednesday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 2, 778 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 418 returned positive. Likewise, 1, 676 people underwent antigen tests, of which 146 were tested positive.

As of today, there are 3,929 active cases in the country.