The Omicron variant was first identified in southern Africa in late November. “I feel like if everyone had just followed the guidelines, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” she said. Bakke expressed frustration over the latest threat. “It’s upped our attentiveness to the reports of symptoms and how contagious it is and the science reports.” “We’re paying closer attention, which we haven’t probably for a little while,” said Rory Bakke, who lives in Marin County, Calif. Some Americans, too, are becoming more nervous.
The variant has been detected in at least 16 states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin. In parts of the United States, health officials have also seen a steady climb in the number of Omicron cases. “This variant reminds us all that we remain closer to the start of the pandemic than the end,” he said. Some lamented what they said was the cost of nations letting their guard down, criticizing the failure to reimpose restrictions like indoor mask wearing and social distancing, and to remind people to isolate if they have been exposed to the virus. If at the end of next week Omicron represents “even 10 percent of the Delta cases, then I’ll be more concerned,” he said.īut even before the discovery of the new variant, some public health experts were raising the alarm that the travel restrictions in place in much of Europe - some of them put in place to counter Omicron - were still not enough to stem the surge in coronavirus cases already taking place. Hotez said, there is not enough data to conclude that. “I think the question people want to know is whether Omicron is going to outcompete Delta, and it’s a possibility,” he said.įor now, Dr. A few hundred cases is still a “tiny fraction” of around 44,000 new coronavirus cases on average that Britain experiences daily, he said. Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said that the known numbers of Omicron cases were so small at the moment that it was hard to know how much to make of the increases in Britain and Denmark. Osterholm said, “and you start looking at their contacts or the environment they’re in, you’re just going to find a lot more.”ĭr. “Once you find someone who is infected,” Dr. This virus is just acting like a highly transmissible respiratory virus.” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “We’re going to see lots of big numbers over the course of the next several weeks in countries around the world,” said Dr. There are some early signs that Omicron may cause only mild illness, though that observation was based mainly on South Africa’s cases among young people, who are less likely overall to become severely ill from Covid.Īnd at the moment, scientists say there is no reason to believe Omicron is impervious to existing vaccines, although they may turn out to be less protective to some unknown degree. Many questions about the variant remain, including precisely how transmissible it is, how well vaccines will hold up against it and how likely it is to cause severe disease.
What that might mean for public health remains less clear. Still, the announcements make clear that the number of Omicron cases is rising quickly. And in Britain, scientists are focusing much of their genomic sequencing on international travelers and on contacts of those already infected with the Omicron variant - two groups more likely to have been exposed. The numbers are skewed somewhat because both countries are widely seen as leaders in genomic sequencing and testing, so they are finding the variant in part because they are looking so carefully for it.
In Denmark, the local health authorities confirmed that there were 183 known cases of the variant, more than triple the total number of suspected cases reported on Friday, and called the figures “worrying.” On Sunday, Britain’s health security agency confirmed that it had now detected 246 cases of the variant - nearly double the total number of cases reported on Friday. The coronavirus variant has been found in at least 45 nations worldwide, with the United States and much of Europe reporting a number of new cases in recent days. LONDON - Confirmed cases of the Omicron variant surged in Britain and Denmark on Sunday, backing up scientists’ fears that it has already spread more widely despite travel bans and adding to worries of new lockdowns before the holidays.