An international passenger approaches the new COVID-19 rapid test site to pick up international passengers at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Friday in Los Angeles.
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Mario Tama / Getty Images
An international passenger approaches the new COVID-19 rapid test site to pick up international passengers at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Friday in Los Angeles.
Mario Tama / Getty Images
The fast-spreading omicron variant of the coronavirus has now been reported in 50 countries and 19 states, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We expect that number to continue to grow,” she added.
The countries that have detected variation range from Hawaii to Texas to Massachusetts. The reports are part of a new increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in the United States, now reaching 100,000 a day.
While officials and researchers are concerned about the transmissibility of the omicron variant, they also say it’s too early to know what damage it might suffer in the US.
Experts say it will likely take several weeks before meaningful data on patient outcomes emerge from South Africa, where the variant was first reported. The whole country has seen an exponential increase in COVID-19 cases in Gauteng province, the epicenter of the outbreak.
In what may be a source of cautious optimism, the South African Medical Research Council recently said that for more than two weeks, the majority of patients in the hospital’s COVID-19 ward did not require extra oxygen to breathe. The panel also said that many COVID-19 omicron diagnoses stem from what are known as incidental findings – like when a patient is tested after visiting the hospital for other reasons, like surgery or pregnancy. pregnant.
There are also fundamental differences in circumstances: in South Africa, for example, only about a third of the eligible population is fully immunized – much lower than in the US.
Walensky said Tuesday that while the number of omicron cases is expected to increase in the US, the most recent data shows that more than 99% of coronavirus samples that have been genetically sequenced show delta variation. She added that it is still too early to tell if omicrons will become dominant over delta.
