Omicron is now dominant US variant, causing three-quarters of new cases, CDC says

The latest form of Covid has overtaken the Delta variant in causing new cases

The Omicron variant is now the driving force behind new Covid cases in America, according to health officials, causing nearly three-quarters of new infections over the last week.

The new coronavirus variant, first identified in South Africa, has now spread across at least 90 countries and caused 73 per cent of new cases in the US last week, per data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Just last month, the highly contagious Delta variant was still causing virtually all US Covid cases.

Now, however, it has been overtaken by the new variant, which appears to spread even more quickly.

Omicron is responsible for roughly 90 per cent of new cases in the New York, Southeast, industrial Midwest, and Pacific Northwest regions of the US.

The shift in trends has been drastic: Omicron is now causing a nearly six-times greater share of infections.

“All of us have a date with omicron,” Dr Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told The Associated Press on Monday. “If you’re going to interact with society, if you’re going to have any type of life, omicron will be something you encounter, and the best way you can encounter this is to be fully vaccinated.”

Scientists are still studying the characteristics of the influential new variant, which was only identified late last month, though it appears to spread more quickly than the Delta variant.

Initial data out of the US and other countries points to another trend: Omicron could be better at evading the protections offered by vaccines or antibodies from previous infections.

Among the 43 initial Omicron cases in the US analysed by the CDC, 14 people had had additional doses of the vaccine, and six had previously come down with coronavirus.

A majority of South Africans have already had the coronavirus once, and yet now the Omicron variant is spreading in large numbers within the country.

As to treating Omicron, public health officials say approved coronavirus vaccines, with the vital addition of a booster shot, are still an effective way to prevent serious illness and death.

“Our booster vaccine regimen work against Omicron,” White House Covid advisor Dr Anthony Fauci said last week. “And so the message remains clear: If you are unvaccinated, get vaccinated. And particularly in the arena of Omicron, if you are fully vaccinated, get your booster shot.”

Officials in places like New York City, one of the regions hardest hit in the country during previous Covid waves, have so far held off on declaring full-on stay-at-home orders, instead pushing for new vaccine mandates as well as vaccine proof requirements.

“We’re going to have a challenging few weeks, but the good news is based on everything our healthcare leadership understands at this moment, we are talking about a matter of weeks,” New York City mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday, adding, ​​“We cannot let those restrictions come back, we cannot have shutdowns here in New York City, we got to keep moving forward.”