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In the face of mounting concerns and lingering questions over the effects of the new omicron variant, health officials reassured the public Tuesday, arguing that the United States is overall better prepared to fight and contain the mutation than it was with previous variants. “To be crystal clear — we have far more tools to fight the variant than we had at this time last year,” Rochelle P. Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a White House coronavirus briefing. (Villegas, Suliman and Pletsch, 11/30)

White House officials expressed optimism Tuesday that the COVID-19 vaccines authorized and approved in the U.S. will provide at least some effectiveness against the Omicron variant, specifically against severe disease. Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden's chief medical adviser, said during a White House briefing that it's "possible" the new mutations in the variant result in a significant reduction in antibody levels, but the available vaccines, and especially booster doses, are likely to result in some amount of protection. (11/30)

Laboratories across the U.S. are on the lookout for the new COVID-19 variant Omicron, which officials have said will almost inevitably be detected here. The world is on high alert as scientists race to understand if the variant could be a game-changer in the pandemic. Early detection, in theory, gives officials more time to understand its characteristics and respond. (Reed, 12/1)

Viruses mutate constantly. To find and track new versions of the coronavirus, scientists analyze the genetic makeup of a portion of samples that test positive. They’re looking at the chemical letters of the virus’s genetic code to find new worrisome mutants, such as omicron, and to follow the spread of known variants, such as delta. It’s a global effort, but until recently the U.S. was contributing very little. With uncoordinated and scattershot testing, the U.S. was sequencing fewer than 1% of positive specimens earlier this year. Now, it is running those tests on 5% to 10% of samples. That’s more in line with what other nations have sequenced and shared with global disease trackers over the course of the pandemic. (Johnson, 11/30)

Public health officials said Tuesday they expect to uncover the first U.S. cases of the Covid-19 Omicron variant within days and are making contingencies to activate a testing network that fell short tracking earlier strains of the virus. Public health labs are prioritizing sequencing of positive samples that exhibit what is known as an “s-gene dropout” — a telltale characteristic Omicron shares with other variants but not the Delta strain. (Lim, 11/30)

No significant new coronavirus-related restrictions are planned in Los Angeles County following the emergence of the Omicron variant, a top health official said Tuesday. “At this moment, we have really, I think, sensible precautions in place,” Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told the county Board of Supervisors. L.A. County’s existing COVID-19 rules are already among the strictest in the state. They include a blanket mandate for residents to wear masks in indoor public spaces, regardless of whether they’ve been vaccinated. (Money and Lin II, 11/30)

KHN: Omicron And Other Coronavirus Variants: What You Need To Know

Americans, already weary of a pandemic nearly two years long, were dealt a new blow during the long Thanksgiving weekend: the announcement that a new coronavirus variant had emerged. The omicron variant, officially known as B.1.1.529, surfaced in November in several southern African nations. It set off alarm bells worldwide when public health officials in South Africa saw it beginning to outcompete the previous reigning variant, delta. This suggested that omicron could eventually spread widely. Indeed, omicron has since been reported on multiple continents, likely due to international travel by people unknowingly infected. (Louis Jacobson, 11/30)