U.S. health officials brace for community spread as Omicron reaches more states.

Health officials still don’t know if the currently approved vaccines protect against omicron, but there is reason to believe that the shots will provide some level of protection.

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	President Biden presented a new strategy for tamping down the spread of the coronavirus on Thursday, encouraging all adults to get a booster shot and seeking to expand testing. (Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times)
	U.S. health officials brace for community spread as Omicron reaches more states With cases of the Omicron variant now recorded from New York to Hawaii, health officials across the United States say that community spread of the virus is inevitable, with one case already traveling from an anime convention in New York City to Minnesota. President Biden is confronting the worrisome new variant with a strategy that encourages boosters for all adults, and aims to expand testing availability and improve its affordability, plans laid out in a speech from the National Institutes of Health on Thursday. Within hours, additional cases of Omicron were being reported in all corners of the country. Officials announced that New York State had confirmed its first five cases of the variant: a 67-year-old woman in Suffolk County who returned from South Africa; two residents of Queens; one resident of Brooklyn; and another person in New York City who had traveled recently. The vaccination status of most of the individuals remained unknown. Another case was identified in a vaccinated man from Minnesota who had recently traveled to New York City for an anime convention at the Javits Center in Midtown Manhattan, which hosted 53,000 attendees over three days. Officials immediately urged all convention participants to get tested. Leaders in Minnesota credited robust disease surveillance systems for finding the case. “This news is concerning, but it is not a surprise,” Gov. Tim Walz said in a statement. “We know that this virus is highly infectious and moves quickly throughout the world. Minnesotans know what to do to keep each other safe now — get the vaccine, get tested, wear a mask indoors and get a booster.” A vaccinated Colorado resident who had recently returned from southern Africa was that state’s first confirmed case. An additional case in California — the first being in San Francisco on Wednesday — was announced in Los Angeles county. The infected person had been vaccinated and had traveled to South Africa in November. But an Oahu resident with no history of travel is the first Omicron case in Hawaii. “This is a case of community spread,” the state’s department of health said in a news release. The individual had previously been infected with the coronavirus but was never vaccinated. At a rare joint news conference on Thursday, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City urged residents not to panic in light of the confirmed Omicron cases, and recommended booster shots for eligible people. They said it was too soon to know how much of a threat the variant might pose to the state. “We’re not defenseless against this variant at all,” Ms. Hochul said, adding, “We’re not having shutdowns. We’re not changing our protocols.” Still, Mr. de Blasio said he expected to see more Omicron cases detected in the coming days: “We have to assume there’s community spread.” The variant has prompted concern among scientists and public health officials because of an unusually high number of mutations. But it will be weeks, at the least, before scientists can say with confidence whether it is more contagious (early evidence suggests it is), whether it causes more serious illness and how it responds to vaccines. A preliminary study in South Africa shows a sudden, sharp rise in re-infections as Omicron spreads. The recovery area in a vaccine clinic in a suburb of Johannesburg. (Credit...Joao Silva/The New York Times) A past coronavirus infection appears to give little immunity to the new Omicron variant rippling across the globe, South African scientists warned on Thursday, potentially tearing away one layer of defense that humanity has won slowly and at immense cost. Just a week after its existence was revealed to the world, the heavily mutated variant, which scientists fear could be the most contagious one yet, is already by far the dominant form of the virus in South Africa and spreading fast, according to officials there. Top European disease experts said Thursday that it could be the dominant form in Europe within months. Scientists in South Africa have reported a sudden, sharp rise last month in coronavirus cases among people in that country who had already been infected, in a study that has not yet been reviewed and published by a scientific journal. The authors noted that there was no such upswing when the Beta and Delta variants emerged. They did not say how many of those reinfections could be attributed to Omicron, but South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases reported on Wednesday that when it conducted a genetic analysis on a sampling of coronavirus-positive test results from November, almost three-quarters were the new variant. “Population-level evidence suggests that the Omicron variant is associated with substantial ability to evade immunity from prior infection,” the authors of the unpublished study wrote. In an online briefing held by the World Health Organization’s regional office for Africa, South African scientists presented a blunter version of the same conclusion, simply based on the country’s raw numbers: About 40 percent of South Africans have had the coronavirus and about 30 percent have been at least partially vaccinated (though there is no doubt some overlap), and yet the number of new cases is soaring. “We believe that previous infection does not provide them protection from infection due to Omicron,” said Anne von Gottberg, a microbiologist at the communicable disease institute. South Africa has the world’s fastest-growing caseload, though the figures are small compared with those in many other countries. In the first half of November, it was averaging about 260 new reported cases a day. On Tuesday, the figure was over 4,300, the highest in months. It jumped to more than 8,600 on Wednesday, and to more than 11,500 on Thursday. Scientists say that the number and type of changes suggest that Omicron is much more transmissible than earlier forms of the virus, though solid proof of that is still lacking. As countries around the world have raced to implement new travel rules, with some barring fliers from southern Africa, experts say those measures could have a limited effect if not accompanied by other steps, including expanding vaccinations, wearing masks and social distancing. “Border control can reduce the risk of importation and can buy time,” Dr. Takeshi Kasai, the World Health Organization’s regional director for the western Pacific told an online news conference on Friday. “But it’s not possible to completely stop the virus unless you completely close the border, which has a significant impact.” Botswana’s leader says foreign diplomats who traveled from Europe were among the first known Omicron cases. Some of the first cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus to be detected in Botswana — which were among the first known in the world — were in foreign diplomats who had traveled to the country from Europe, the country’s president said. President Mokgweetsi Masisi told CNN on Thursday that four diplomats who tested positive for the coronavirus on Nov. 11, and who were later found to be carrying the new variant, “came from a number of countries.” He added: “Yes, some had been to Europe, and some had been elsewhere.” He did not offer more details. On Sunday, Botswana’s health minister, Edwin Dikoloti, said that most of the 19 Omicron cases that have been detected in his country were “imported.” Until now, Botswana had not disclosed the nationalities or other details of the four diplomats, with officials saying that they wanted to avoid stigmatizing other nations. The president’s comments highlight that scientists still cannot say with certainty where the variant originated. Last week, after Botswana and South Africa became the first countries to identify the variant, many Western nations, including the United States, closed their borders to travelers from southern Africa. It was sometimes called the “Botswana variant,” before the World Health Organization last Friday labeled it a “variant of concern” and named it Omicron. Mr. Masisi described the travel bans as “irresponsible,” saying that those nations were experiencing far worse coronavirus outbreaks than Botswana. With Omicron infections now detected in more than 40 countries, he added, Western nations could not say for certain how many cases of the variant were already “in your own backyard.” Instead, he said, rich countries should have focused on ensuring a more equitable distribution of Covid vaccines, particularly to Africa, which has the lowest vaccination rate of any continent. “Why does it take this to drive the point home, that no one is safe until we are all availed the vaccines?” he said. In an earlier statement, the government said that scientists in Botswana had detected the new variant after testing four diplomats who entered the country on Nov. 7. They tested positive for the coronavirus on Nov. 11, and genetic sequencing confirmed on Nov. 24 that they were carrying the variant. By then, officials have said, the diplomats had returned to their home countries. — Lynsey Chutel