First US case of omicron Covid-19 variant detected in California, CDC says.
of the coronavirus has been detected in California, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday. The CDC said in a statement that the California Department of Public Health and the San Francisco Department of Public Health confirmed the case in a traveler who returned from South Africa on Nov.
22 — three days beforeThe person, an adult under age 50, tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday. "The individual, who was fully vaccinated and had mild symptoms that are improving, is self-quarantining and has been since testing positive," the CDC statement read. Close contacts of the person have been undergoing Covid tests and so far, no one has tested positive. The fact that the person had only mild symptoms is a testimony to vaccinations, Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, said during a news conference. "Vaccinations do a really important thing: protect against severe disease, against hospitalization and death," he said. During a separate news conference, Dr. Grant Colfax of the San Francisco Department of Public Health said the patient had received two doses of the Moderna vaccine, but had not received a booster shot.It is another example of the importance not only of vaccination, but also of the booster shot, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Wednesday at a White House news conference. Even though the current vaccines do not target variants such as delta or omicron,"you get spillover protection even against a variant that the vaccine wasn't specifically directed at," he said.Newsom said the person with the omicron variant had received the Covid vaccine within the last six months, and therefore was not yet eligible for a booster shot.that suggest it may spread just as or more easily than the delta variant, which accounts for 99.9 percent of Covid cases in the U.S. Scientists have cautioned that it's still unclear whether omicron is more dangerous than other versions of the virus that has killed more than 5 million people worldwide. It is also unknown how well the vaccines and treatments would work against the variant.
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