Thailand’s public health ministry today confirmed the first case of infection with the Omicron strain, making it the 47th country to detect this new variant of the COVID-19 virus.

Officials said the case is a 35-year-old American man who had been living in Spain for a year before arriving in Thailand last month. The patient showed almost no symptoms of the disease.

Department of Disease Control (DDC) Director-General Opas Karnkawinpong disclosed that the traveller will be retested in order to be 100% certain about the infection being of the Omicron variant.

Thailand has detected its first case of Omicron. The coronavirus variant was found in an American businessman of Thai descent who arrived in the country from Spain. https://t.co/OeRU6FYGKp #Thailand #WhatsHappeningInThailand pic.twitter.com/SnXOYl7f4k

— ThaiViralPost | โพสต์ไวรัลไทย (@ThaiViralPost) December 6, 2021

Medical staff are testing people who had close contact with the patient, which show a low risk of infection.

In the past 24 hours, Thailand reported another 4,000 cases of COVID-19 and 22 deaths, bringing the nation’s patient and death counts to 2,100,000 and 20,964, respectively. More than 57 percent of the Thai population has been vaccinated with two doses of COVID-19.

-Thailand News (TN)