BEIJING - The health authorities in northern China's port city of Tianjin have detected the first case of the Omicron coronavirus variant on the country's mainland, the state-run Tianjin Daily reported on Monday (Dec 13).
The infection was discovered in a traveller who arrived in the city from overseas on Dec 9, the newspaper said, adding that the patient is currently being treated in isolation in hospital.
The Tianjin Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday confirmed that it was an Omicron infection after genome sequencing of samples collected from the traveller, China Daily reported.
It is the first Omicron case reported on the Chinese mainland.
China reported 76 new confirmed coronavirus cases for Dec. 13, compared with 101 a day earlier, its health authority said on Monday.
Of the new infections, 51 were locally transmitted, according to a statement by the National Health Commission, compared with 80 a day earlier.
The new local cases were reported by authorities in the provinces of Zhejiang, Shaanxi and the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang.
China reported 15 new asymptomatic cases, which it classifies separately from confirmed cases, compared with 17 a day earlier.
There were no new deaths, leaving the death toll unchanged at 4,636.
As of Dec. 13, mainland China had 99,856 confirmed cases.
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