TIANJIN -- North China's Tianjin municipality will launch the third round of citywide nucleic acid testing at 7 am Saturday, said the municipal epidemic prevention and control headquarters.

The mass testing is scheduled to be completed in about 24 hours, it added.

The municipality of 13.9 million people that neighbors Beijing has conducted two rounds of citywide mass testing.

The infections in Tianjin were first reported on Dec 8, and the gene sequencing found the first two locally transmitted confirmed cases were the VOC/Omicron variant.

As of 2 pm Thursday, the city had reported a total of 126 locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases and 22 asymptomatic carriers in the latest epidemic resurgence.