Hong Kong, Dec 4: China on Sunday reported two additional deaths from COVID-19 as some cities move cautiously to ease anti-pandemic restrictions following increasingly vocal public frustrations.

The National Health Commission said one death was reported each in the provinces of Shandong and Sichuan. No information was given about the ages of the victims or whether they had been fully vaccinated.

China, where the virus first was detected in late 2019 in the central city of Wuhan, is the last major country trying to stop transmission completely through quarantines, lockdowns and mass testing.

Concerns over vaccination rates are believed to figure prominently in the ruling Communist Party's determination to stick to its hard-line strategy.

While nine in 10 Chinese have been vaccinated, only 66 per cent of people over 80 have gotten one shot while 40 per cent have received a booster, according to the commission. It said 86 per cent of people over 60 are vaccinated.

Given those figures and the fact that relatively few Chinese have been built up antibodies by being exposed to the virus, some fear millions could die if restrictions were lifted entirely.

Yet, an outpouring of public anger appears to have prompted authorities to lift some of the more onerous restrictions, even as they say the "zero-COVID" strategy which aims to isolate every infected person is still in place.

The demonstrations, the largest and most widely spread in decades, erupted Nov. 25 after a fire in an apartment building in the northwestern city of Urumqi killed at least 10 people.

That set off angry questions online about whether firefighters or victims trying to escape were blocked by locked doors or other anti-virus controls. Authorities denied that, but the deaths became a focus of public frustration.

The country saw several days of protests across cities including Shanghai and Beijing, with protesters demanding an easing of COVID-19 curbs.

Some demanded Chinese President Xi Jinping step down, an extraordinary show of public dissent in a society over which the ruling Communist Party exercises near total control.

Beijing and some other Chinese cities announced that riders can board buses and subways without a virus test for the first time in months.

The requirement has led to complaints from some Beijing residents that even though the city has shut many testing stations, most public venues still require COVID-19 tests.

On Sunday, China announced another 35,775 cases from the past 24 hours, 31,607 of which were asymptomatic, bringing its total to 336,165 with 5,235 deaths.

While many have questioned the accuracy of the Chinese figures, they remain relatively low compared to the US and other nations which are now relaxing controls and trying to live with the virus that has killed at least 6.6 million people worldwide and sickened almost 650 million.

China still imposes mandatory quarantine for incoming travellers even as its infection numbers are low compared to its 1.4 billion population.

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New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday said the Opposition is protesting for the right to vote for every Indian and demanded a "clean and pure" voter list, asserting that the issue of alleged irregularities pointed out by him will "explode" soon as it is not related to a single constituency but the whole country.

Indicating that he would not submit a signed affidavit as sought by the Election Commission, Gandhi asserted that the data analysed by the Congress to provide "proof" of "vote theft" is taken from the EC website.

"This is their data. It is not my data that I should sign. It is their data only and has been taken from their website. This is only a move to distract," he told reporters.

The Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, who participated in a protest march by the opposition on the "vote theft" issue, said the Election Commission is "silent" as the truth is before the entire nation after his charge that over one lakh votes in an assembly constituency in Karnataka were found to be fake in a research conducted by his party.

"Another thing I want to tell is that this has not just happened in Bangalore, but in different constituencies across the country, and the Election Commission knows this. The EC knows that this data will explode. What it is trying to control and hide, we will bring it out, and it will explode. The EC knows this," he told reporters.

Gandhi was briefly detained along with others as police stopped the protest march by opposition MPs from Parliament House to the EC office.

"They (EC) cannot talk as the truth is before the entire nation," the Congress leader said as he was being taken away in a bus by the police.

"This fight is not political, but for saving the Constitution," he asserted.

This fight is for 'one man, one vote' and we want a clean, pure voter list," the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha added.

He said all the MPs of the INDIA alliance were stopped and taken into custody when they were going to meet the Election Commission.

"The truth of 'vote theft' is now before the country. This fight is not political; it is a fight to protect democracy, the Constitution, and the right to ‘one person, one vote’.

"The united opposition and every voter in the country demand a clean and transparent voter list. And, we will secure this right at all costs," Gandhi claimed in a post on X later.

Gandhi had on Thursday cited data from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to claim that over 1 lakh votes were "stolen" through five types of manipulation in Mahadevapura assembly segment in Karnataka. He alleged there were 11,965 duplicate voters, 40,009 with fake and invalid addresses, 10,452 bulk voters or single-address voters, 4,132 voters with invalid photos and 33,692 voters misusing Form 6 of new voters.