(Rewrite to focus on situation in the city of Tianjin)

BEIJING, Jan 18 (Reuters) - The Chinese municipality ofTianjin reported fewer COVID-19 cases on Tuesday as its outbreakshowed early signs of easing, while the daily case count in thecity of Anyang hit a record.

Tianjin, a key port in the northern China, reported 18domestically transmitted cases with confirmed symptoms forMonday, the National Health Commission (NHC) data showed onTuesday. That marks the lowest daily number in a week.

NHC official He Qinghua said on Saturday the risk of theTianjin outbreak spreading to other areas was graduallydeclining, as new cases in the past three days were mainly inpeople who had been quarantined.

Assembly plants for Volkswagen and Toyota in Tianjinremained closed due to the outbreak. The component factory ofVolkswagen in the city has resumed some of the shifts sinceThursday last week, according to a statement from VolkswagenGroup China on Tuesday.

Tianjin reported over 300 local symptomatic cases from thecurrent cluster, which has also spread Omicron infections to twoother cities.

Tianjin's caseload remains smaller than many outbreaksoverseas, but it has made it harder for locals to leave town,sealed up higher risk communities and launched multiple roundsof testing among its 14 million residents, under China'sguideline to quickly curb any flare-up as soon as possible.

The capital Beijing city, about to stage the Winter OlympicsGames starting Feb. 4, reported one local case with confirmedsymptoms for Monday. The infected individual was a close contactof a local Omicron case reported for Jan. 15.

The city of Anyang, which detected Omicron in an outbreakthat it said could be traced back to a person arriving fromTianjin, reported 94 local symptomatic cases for Monday, thehighest daily count since Jan. 8.

Anyang has stepped up its curbs over the weekend, demandingresidents not to leave their communities or villages at will.

China reported a total of 127 local cases with confirmedsymptoms for Monday, down from 163 a day earlier.

There were no new deaths for Monday, leaving the death tollat 4,636. As of Jan. 17, mainland China had 105,258 confirmedsymptomatic cases, including both local and imported ones.

(Reporting by Roxanne Liu, Stella Qiu, Nori Shirouzu, AlbeeZhang and Ryan Woo; Editing by Kim Coghill and Michael Perry) ((yifan.qiu@thomsonreuters.com; 86-10-66271289;))