Budapest, Dec 14 (IANS): Hungary has confirmed its first two cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant.

"The Omicron variant has arrived in Hungary," Chief Medical Officer Cecilia Muller said on Monday on the public television channel M1, adding that the variant had been detected in two samples.

"For the time being, no more cases have been revealed, but as mentioned earlier, the variant is already widespread in Europe, so its appearance in Hungary is not surprising," Muller added.

The mutation infected a married couple. The Chief Medical Officer stressed that taking the third vaccine dose is now more important than ever.

Hungary on Monday reported 16,017 coronavirus cases in a 72-hour span (authorities do not provide data on weekends so the numbers published each Monday include data from Friday, Saturday and Sunday), raising the national total to 1,198,939.

In the past 72 hours, 455 people have died from the disease, taking the death toll to 36,884 in the country. At present, 6,531 patients are being treated in hospitals, including 565 on ventilators, according to figures from the government's coronavirus information website.

As of Monday, 6,190,822 people have received at least the first vaccine dose, while 5,893,531 had two, and 3,005,109 got their booster shot, according to the website.