Covid news live: New York State detects five cases of Omicron variant as new US air travel rules loom | World news | Today Headlines

Several cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant have been detected in New York City, health officials said Thursday, including a man who attended an anime convention in Manhattan in late November and tested positive for the variant at his. back home in Minnesota.

In addition to the congressman, health officials said tests showed five other people recently infected with Covid-19 had the variant, the Associated Press reports.

They included a person from the Long Island suburb who had recently traveled to South Africa, residents of Brooklyn and Queens and another case possibly related to travel.

“No reason to be alarmed. We just want to make sure the public is aware of the information when we receive it, ”Governor Kathy Hochul said.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the geographic spread of positive tests suggested the variant was undergoing “community spread” in the city and was not linked to any particular event.

Officials in the city of 8.8 million people said they expected it to be only a matter of time before the new variant was reported in the city.

“We should assume that there is a community spread of the variant in our city,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.

As the comfort of air travel returns, it is inevitable that new variants like Omicron will spread from country to country and state to state, said Prof Danielle Ompad, epidemiologist at the School of Global Public Health at New York University.

“We shouldn’t panic, but we should be worried,” she said.

Hello, I am Samantha Lock and welcome to our Friday Covid blog.

I’ll give you an overview of the latest coronavirus updates as they happen.

Let’s start with the news that several cases of Omicron a variant of the coronavirus has been detected in new Yorkhealth officials, including a man who attended an anime convention in Manhattan in late November and tested positive for the variant on his return to Minnesota, said Thursday evening.

Health officials also said tests have shown that five other people recently infected with Covid-19 had the variant in suburbs of Long Island as well as in Brooklyn and Queens, the Associated Press reports.

Governor Kathy Hochul said the cases were “not a cause for alarm” as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the geographic spread of positive tests suggested the variant was undergoing “community spread. ” in the city.

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