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 Polish national who arrived from Warsaw on Dec 9.
The patient had a normal temperature and no symptoms but later tested positive and was transferred to a designated hospital, the Global Times said.
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.
“We do not need to be afraid of Omicron with the implementation of the dynamic zero-case policy and strictly observing the precise prevention and control measures,” China’s top respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan was quoted as saying in the Global Times.
China reported 76 new confirmed coronavirus cases for Dec 13, compared with 101 a day earlier, its health authority said on Tuesday.
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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.
Source: straitstimes