A man from Minnesota who attended an animation convention in New York last month and later tested positive for the Omicron coronaviruses variant has told health officials that 15 of his friends have also contracted the disease.
Health officials told media outlets that it's not clear if any of those people also caught the Omicron variant. The Omicron variant was reported in the United States for the first time by a man at the convention, which was attended by tens of thousands of people.
It's hard to say that it's a superspreader. The manager of the epidemiology section for the Minnesota Department of Public Health told The New York Times that they were concerned about that.
The variant's possible spread is being investigated by officials in New York and Minnesota, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to The Washington Post.
Kris Ehresmann, the director of the infectious disease epidemiology, prevention, and control division at the Minnesota Department of Health, told The Post that they don't know if they will see a lot of Omicron or Delta. We're likely to see a lot of it.
Half of the 30 people from across the United States who attended the late-November convention are now sick, the man told health officials.
The man may not have picked up the Omicron variant at the convention at all, as it's still unclear where he contracted it. All attendees were required to wear masks and have a dose of the vaccine.
The president of LeftField Media, which organized the convention, told The Times that there have been no other mass cases reported since the convention ended.
The man received a booster weeks before he went to the convention, according to the Times. He turned over the names and contact information of some of his friends to health officials because of his mild symptoms.
New York officials said Saturday that three new cases of the Omicron variant have been reported in the state.
Kathy Hochul has urged calm and said the Omicron cases are not cause for alarm.
Most Omicron cases so far have been mild, but experts caution that hospitalization data is too preliminary to draw conclusions about the variant's severity.
