The first US case of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus was reported in California on Wednesday, urging officials of the Biden administration to make their urgent appeals to Americans to be fully vaccinated and, if eligible, to renew a booster shot.
The patient, a traveler who returned to California from South Africa on Nov. 22, has been isolated and aggressive contact tracing is underway, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement, adding that the person had been fully vaccinated and had mild symptoms that improved. Close contacts of the individuals had tested negative, the agency said.
The World Health Organization has warned that the risk of the variant, a new iteration of the coronavirus first discovered in southern Africa, is “very high”. More than 20 countries have now found the variant.
Public health officials around the world have said for days they expected the new, mutated form of the virus to make its way to the United States soon, despite the imposition of travel bans on international travelers from eight South African countries, a move by several other countries have also taken.
But confirmation of the variant’s presence nevertheless came as a shock to President Biden’s efforts to deliver on his campaign promise to end the pandemic quickly and definitively. At the White House on Wednesday, Mr. Biden said “we are learning more every day,” vowing the administration would “fight this variant with science and speed, not chaos and confusion.”
Shortly afterwards, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, told reporters that confirmation of the new strain in the United States should convince unvaccinated Americans to get shots immediately.
“We have 60 million people in this country who are unvaccinated and eligible to be vaccinated,” said Dr. Fauci. ‘Let’s get them vaccinated. Let’s vaccinate people, give them a boost. Let’s get the kids vaccinated.”
dr. Fauci expressed his optimism that the country would eventually get out of the grip of the pandemic, saying that “there is no doubt this will end.” But he also urged caution, saying health officials still didn’t know much about the new variant.
Omicron carries more than 50 genetic mutations that could theoretically make it both more infectious and less vulnerable to the body’s immune defenses than previous variants. More than 30 of the mutations are in the peak of the virus, a protein on its surface. Vaccines train the body’s immune defenses to attack and attack the spike.
Available vaccines can still provide substantial protection against serious illness and death after infection with the variant, and federal officials are calling on vaccinated people to get booster shots. The makers of the two most effective vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, are preparing to reformulate their injections if necessary, but that will take time.
In California, Governor Gavin Newsom said the infected person had not been hospitalized. The governor said the person began to feel mild symptoms on Nov. 25, was tested on Sunday and received a positive result on Monday. Within a day, scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, determined that it was Omicron.
California health officials said the state was ramping up testing for coronavirus at airports, focusing on arrivals from countries identified by the CDC as potential sources of the virus. mr. Newsom said the state won’t step up public health restrictions, at least not in the short term, but that “we have to assume it’s in other states as well.”
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“There is no need to panic, but we must remain vigilant,” he said in a statement.
The health director of the City of San Francisco, Dr. Grant Colfax, added that “we are still learning about the Omicron variant, but we are not back to square one with this disease.”
In California, about 79 percent of residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine, after months of campaigning by state officials. Cases and hospitalizations have largely declined since a Delta variant-driven summer surge.
Following news of the variant’s spread in South Africa, countries around the world have curtailed air traffic to and from southern Africa, measures officials there described as unnecessarily punitive, especially in light of Western countries’ failure to adopt them. managed to deliver sufficient vaccines and logistical support to the mainland.
Dutch officials said on Tuesday they identified cases of the variant a week before Friday, when 13 passengers arriving on flights from South Africa tested positive, indicating the variant was already present.
The WHO says the rise of Omicron was the result of vaccine inequality in poor countries. Still, some countries, including Britain and the United States, have renewed their efforts to convince citizens to get booster vaccinations as soon as possible.