Photo/Illutration A woman wearing a face mask looks at a queue as she waits to get a throat swab for the COVID-19 test at a mobile coronavirus testing facility at the central business district in Beijing, Feb. 23, 2022. (AP Photo)

BEIJING--China on Friday reported the highest daily count of COVID-19 cases arriving from outside the mainland in nearly two years, with infections mostly from Hong Kong as the financial hub grapples with a wave of infections.

The mainland detected a total of 142 imported cases with confirmed symptoms for Thursday, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Friday.

It marks the highest imported caseload since the authority began classifying domestically transmitted cases and infected travelers from outside the mainland separately, in March 2020.

More than 100 imported cases came from Hong Kong, with 47 reported in the southern city of Shenzhen and 51 in the eastern municipality of Shanghai, local health authorities’ bulletins showed. The capital Beijing also detected seven symptomatic cases arriving from Hong Kong.

Mainland China requires most general travelers arriving from outside to be quarantined for at least 14 days, and cities have varying requirements afterwards before they can travel freely.

For Thursday the mainland also detected 87 asymptomatic carriers arriving from outside, which authorities count separately.

There were also 82 locally transmitted infections with confirmed symptoms on Thursday, the NHC data showed.

No new deaths were reported, leaving the death toll unchanged at 4,636.

As of Feb. 24, mainland China had 108,604 cases with confirmed symptoms, including both local and imported ones.

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