Tianjin striving to control Omicron 'in few days', says top Chinese expert

The municipality of the northern Chinese city of Tianjin is trying to block local community transmission of COVID-19 amid the spread of Omicron, local media reported citing a top Chinese expert.

In an interview, Zhang Boli, an academician from the Chinese Academy of Engineering and head of the Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) said that the first step is to quickly block local community transmission outside COVID-19 control regions, Global Times reported.

From January 8 to January 16, a total of 294 confirmed local cases were reported in Tianjin. A total of 22 asymptomatic cases have been reported, the news outlet reported citing local authorities said on Monday.

"This round of outbreak will be under control generally when there are no new patients within the regions that are under control and no infections are found in the isolation sites," Zhang said.

"Don't treat the Omicron variant of COVID-19 like the flu" Zhang stressed, noting that Omicron is different from the flu.

Meanwhile, the Chinese mainland has reported 163 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases in the last 214 hours, according to the National Health Commission on Monday.

According to Xinhua News Agency, out of the latest local cases, 80 were reported in Tianjin, 68 in Henan, nine in Guangdong, five in Shaanxi, and one in Guangxi, as per the commission.

The commission reported 60 new imported cases were recorded in 11 provincial-level regions, as per the news agency.