12 US States have found Omicron COVID-19 Variant while Delta Variant Cases also increasing

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The director of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), Dr. Rochelle Walensky said, “99.9% of cases in the country right now are from the Delta variant. We are equipped and prepared to fight the Omicron variant head-on”. Point to be noted that at least 32 cases of the Omicron COVID-19 variant have been reported across 12 states including 7 cases in California, 1 in New Jersey in a Georgia resident, 1 in Utah, 2 in Colorado, 1 in Missouri, 1 in Pennsylvania, 3 in Maryland, 6 in Nebraska, 1 in Hawaii, 8 in New York, 1 in Minnesota, and 1 in Massachusetts. The handful of known cases in the US was reported by health officials as mild and in vaccinated people. But there’s not enough evidence yet on what to expect from Omicron.

Tom Hanson reported that there are still cases from the Delta variant that have officials’ attention. COVID cases driven by the Delta variant are rising, averaging 96,000 new cases a day and hitting hard in the Upper Midwest to New England. New Hampshire led the country in new cases per capita last week. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical advisor to the president, Dr. Anthony Fauci said, “There’s every reason to believe that if you get vaccinated and boosted, that you would have at least some degree of cross-protection, very likely against severe disease, even against the Omicron variant”. But Omicron spreads twice as fast as the Delta variant, and this week, mild cases of the strain, first identified in South Africa, popped up in multiple states including Maryland.

Moreover, Governor Larry Hogan had just announced an aggressive partnership to find COVID cases fast. He said, “The state entered into agreements with both Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland to more than double our already aggressive real-time variant surveillance”. International travelers will be required to take a COVID test one day before boarding a flight to the US from a country where Omicron has been detected. Many airports have on-site testing once they arrive. At least two dozen countries have identified cases with the Omicron strain. Baltimore City Health Commissioner, Dr. Letitia Dzirasa said, “Now is not the time to relax. We’re seeing this variant of concern and the way to address variants is to slow COVID transmission. We do that through vaccination. We do that through masking”.