A senior Tunisian health official on Saturday announced that two people have been tested positive for a new variant of COVID-19 in the governorate of Tunis.

"The first lab tests did not demonstrate a particular gravity of this new variant, either in terms of symptoms or the speed of spread," the Director General of Health at the Health Ministry, Faycel Ben Salah, said during a press conference.

Tunisian Health Ministry on Friday night reported 725 new COVID-19 cases, raising the total number of infections in the country to 226,740.

The death toll from the virus rose by 35 to 7,719. While the total number of recoveries reached 187,753.