According to NBC News, the Omicron COVID-19 variant has arrived in North America after two cases were discovered in Canada.
According to Ontario health officials, the two persons arrived in Canada lately from Nigeria.
In a joint statement, Christine Elliott and Kieran Moore, top health officials in Ontario, said, “We continue to urge the federal government to take the necessary steps to mandate point-of-arrival testing for all travelers, irrespective of where they’re coming from, to further protect against the spread of this new variant.”
Travelers who have recently visited South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, Namibia, or Zimbabwe are being subjected to quick testing in the province.
The cases were announced a day after Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said NBC’s “Weekend TODAY” that Omicron might be in the United States already. Its alterations, he added, might make it extremely transmissible and allow it to evade the body’s immune system and vaccination defenses.
“We have not detected it yet, but when you have a virus that is showing this degree of transmissibility and you’re already having travel-related cases that they’ve been noted in Israel and Belgium and in other places — when you have a virus like this, it almost invariably is ultimately going to go essentially all over,” Fauci said.
President Joe Biden is expected to discuss the U.S. response to the variant on Monday. According to NBC, Israel closed its borders to travelers, with exceptions, on Saturday in response to the variant.