China detects first case of Omicron variant, puts large-scale travel restrictions

Mainland China reported its first case of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 on Monday in the city of Tianjin, close to the capital of Beijing, health authorities said. The infection was discovered in a traveller who arrived in the city from overseas on December 9 and showed no symptoms but tested COVID-19 positive on Thursday.

According to the Chinese official media, the patient is currently being treated in isolation in a city hospital. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom reported Monday the first publicly confirmed death globally from the heavily mutated Omicron variant.

On the other hand, a sub-strain of the COVID-19 Delta variant, AY.4 has triggered a new cluster of cases in eastern China's industrial powerhouse province of Zhejiang. As many as 190 cases have been registered in a week. After the new development, the local authorities have locked down more than 500,000 residents and shut down factories.

Large-scale travel restrictions have been put in the province with mass nucleic acid tests and more than 52,000 people have been sent to centralised isolation. COVID-19 first emerged in mainland China in late 2019. The country controlled the outbreak within months, but the virus had meanwhile become a global pandemic. 

China reported 80 new locally-transmitted cases with symptoms on the mainland for December 12, including 74 identified in Zhejiang. Manzhouli city located at the China-Russia border in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has reported 537 local cases during the latest resurgence.