The World Health Organisation has urged people not to panic as scientists around the world work to learn about COVID's Omicron variant.
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One of the first known cases of the Omicron variant in the US has spoken out about his symptoms, giving fresh hope that the new strain may present a path out of our pandemic.
Peter McGinn, 30, from Minnesota, an anime fan and healthcare analyst, believes he contracted the new variant at a convention in New York for fans of Japanese animation.
The convention attracted over 50,000 people from November 20-22 and McGinn travelled there in a group of 35. Of that group, 15 have since tested positive, although it is not yet known how many others have Omicron.
Peter McGinn was surprised to learn he was one of the USA's first know cases of Omicron. Photo / Facebook
McGinn, who is fully vaccinated and has even received a booster shot, said he was surprised to learn that he had contracted the new variant.
"I felt perfectly safe with the people that I was with, and so it never really crossed my mind to think that I had Covid," he told ABC. "I was just a little taken aback."
The anime fan described the virus in comic-book terms, referring to it as a "supervillain".
"It seems like a villain name to me and so I guess that kind of matches this since it's a virus," he told the Star-Tribune.
It was a friend's positive test that prompted McGinn to get tested on his return to Minnesota.
"That threw me for a loop because I really wasn't feeling sick," he said.
McGinn said he did not suffer severe symptoms. Photo / Facebook
His only symptoms were a runny nose and a small cough - and further testing then revealed the presence of the Omicron strain in his system.
McGinn told the Star-Tribune that he believed his highly-vaccinated status had protected him.
"In my opinion, they absolutely work because they reduce the amount of people who are in the hospital," he said.
"You might still get Covid, but it reduces the symptoms based off my experience."
McGinn noted that his lingering symptom was curiosity about how the new strain would affect others.
"I honestly felt fine the entire time," he said. "I'm more interested in seeing the results, like if more people get this and their reaction to it."
Spreading fast
The new variant rapidly moved South Africa from a period of low transmission, averaging less than 200 new cases per day in mid-November, to more than 16,000 per day over the weekend.
Omicron accounts for more than 90 per cent of the new cases in Gauteng province, the epicentre of the new wave, according to experts. The new variant is rapidly spreading and achieving dominance in South Africa's eight other provinces.
"The virus is spreading extraordinarily fast," said Willem Hanekom, director of the Africa Health Research Institute. "If you look at the slopes of this wave that we're in at the moment, it's a much steeper slope than the first three waves that South Africa experienced. This indicates that it's spreading fast and it may therefore be a very transmissible virus."
But Hanekom, who is also co-chair of the South African Covid-19 Variants Research Consortium, said South Africa had such low numbers of Delta cases when Omicron emerged, "I don't think we can say" it out-competed Delta.
Scientists say it's unclear whether Omicron will behave the same way in other countries as it has in South Africa. Lemieux said there are already some hints about how it may behave; in places like the United Kingdom, which does a lot of genomic sequencing, he said, "we're seeing what appears to be a signal of exponential increase of Omicron over Delta."
In the United States, as in the rest of the world, "there's still a lot of uncertainty", he said.
"But when you put the early data together, you start to see a consistent picture emerge: that Omicron is already here, and based on what we've observed in South Africa, it's likely to become the dominant strain in the coming weeks and months and will likely cause a surge in case numbers."
