WASHINGTON, Dec 6 — The Omicron coronavirus strain has been registered in at least 15 US states and it continues to spread, according to US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Dr Rochelle Walensky.
“We know we have several dozen cases and we’re following them closely. And we are every day hearing about more and more probable cases so the number is likely to rise,” Sputnik quoted Walensky as saying on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.
The CDC chief emphasised nonetheless that the Delta variant continues to account for most of the Covid-19 cases in the US.
“We have about 90 to 100,000 cases a day right now in the United States, and 99.9 per cent of them are the delta variant,” Walensky said. She added that there are “many things that work against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid, regardless of the variant that we’ve seen before.”
On Friday, the total number of US states that had registered Omicron cases went up to nine. The first case of the new strain, which emerged in South Africa in November, was reported in the US on Dec 1.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has said that the Omicron variant is a cause for concern but not for alarm. According to White House Covid-19 experts, the US is in a better position to deal with the Omicron strain than with previous variants of the coronavirus.
— Bernama
