Another three cases of Omicron have been confirmed in New York City
A New Yorker walks by a sign for a vaccine site in Staten Island on November 29. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images New York is one of a handful of states where cases of the worrisome new Omicron variant have been detected in the U.S. On Saturday, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that there were eight cases in the state, seven of them in New York City. Those are likely to be the first of many in the state, which had already been experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases from the Delta variant.
Governor Hochul stressed on Thursday that the newly detected cases were “not a cause for major alarm.” Hochul, who declared a state of emergency in New York a week ago, citing rising COVID cases and the possible arrival of Omicron, did not announce any new public-health measures in response to the cases of the new variant.
It is not yet clear if he contracted his infection in New York; Minnesota officials said he had not recently traveled abroad. Scientists in South Africa announced the discovery of the Omicron variant on November 24, after detecting its presence in COVID test samples collected there on November 9.