Masks And Vaccines Prevented NYC Anime Convention From Becoming A Covid Superspreader Event, CDC Finds

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed in a study Thursday that the coronaviruses did not circulate widely at a New York City convention in November.

More than 50,000 people attended the convention, but only a small number of them tested positive for coronaviruses, meaning there was no evidence of widespread transmission.

There were no deaths reported after one person with Covid-19 ended up in the hospital.

The CDC thinks that the convention's strict Covid-19 rules and air purification system helped prevent the coronaviruses from spreading uncontrollably.

Attendees who caught Covid-19 were more likely to visit bars, nightclubs, and karaoke venues.

A Minnesota man who attended a convention in New York and later became the second person in the United States to be diagnosed with omicron was the focus of a CDC study published Thursday.

The CDC's study of the convention had a few limitations. Around 53,000 people supposedly attended the event, but researchers could only send surveys and look for Covid-19 test results for roughly 35,000 with available contact information. The study looked for positive tests by matching attendees names and addresses with local Covid-19 data, meaning at- home tests and some other records may not have been included.

Almost all of the U.S. coronaviruses cases were made up of the delta variant. Out of 20 positive tests from the convention, 75% were linked to delta and 25% were caused by omicron. The CDC warned Thursday that if the highly contagious omicron variant was dominant in New York at the time of the convention, transmission may have been higher.

One day after the nation's first omicron-positive patient was discovered in California, health officials in Minnesota disclosed an Anime NYC-related omicron case. Within weeks, omicron accounted for the majority of the country's coronaviruses infections, which caused a record-breaking surge in daily Covid-19 cases and forced officials in states like New York and California to reintroduce mask-wearing rules. The increased transmissibility of omicron has helped drive U.S. hospitalizations to record levels and cause an increase in Covid-19 deaths.

Live updates on the coronaviruses.