where moments ago governor kathy hochul announced that the state has five cases of the new omicron variant, one in suffolk county, and four in new york city. the case in suffolk county is a confirmed traveler from south africa who tested positive on november 30th. this comes as a minnesota patient with no history of international travel tested positive after attending a convention two weeks ago with 63,000 other people at the javits center in new york city. the city does not know if any of the confirmed cases are connected to that convention. all five cases are mild. but mayor bill de blasio said you should assume it has been spread in the city. including cases from colorado and california. we still don t know a lot about omicron. but south african health officials announced today it poses three times the risk of infection than delta. and it could make up more than half of europe s cases in just a few months. in response to the new variant and rising case, president biden det
tomorrow i ll be 18 seconds later. we begin with the breaking news on the pandemic. this omicron variant of covid first hit the united states officially. we can tell you now it is spreading. it has now been formally confirmed and found in three states, california, colorado and minnesota. what do doctors make of this new variant? well, we will ask the doctor who treated the very first omicron case in the united states. he joins us in a moment. as for those three states with the variant, experts view this as a floor. they expect more spread on the way. indeed, the person who has it in minnesota had traveled recently to new york city to a very large anime convention in late november. as it happens, we have a photo. about 50,000 people were there celebrating, discussing, learning, doing all the anime things. and given that crowd and what is known about variants, the mayor of new york says they are operating as if there is already community spread of the variant in new york city
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