Friends who attended convention with Minnesotan with omicron have coronavirus, official says
The Minnesota man who contracted the omicron variant of the coronavirus met up with about 35 friends at a New York City anime convention and about half have now tested positive for the coronavirus, a state health official said Friday.
Members of the group traveled to New York from a variety of states for the weekend convention that began Nov. 19 and tested positive after their return, said Kris Ehresmann, director of the Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Prevention, and Control Division at the Minnesota Department of Health. It is not known whether they are infected with omicron or another variant. "We don't know if we'll see a lot of omicron, or we'll see a lot of delta," Ehresmann said in an interview. "But we're likely to see a lot of covid" out of the convention, which drew 53,000 people and tightly packed crowds from Nov. 19 to 21.
The development is not sufficient, by itself, to determine where people were infected, who gave the virus to whom or to develop a timeline of the virus's spread, Ehresmann said. The man infected with omicron also spent time elsewhere in New York City. New York, Minnesota and other states, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are investigating the case and have begun tracing the Minnesota man's contacts.
But the information casts the convention as a more likely location where the virus could have spread widely. Scientists have speculated the new variant may be significantly more transmissible than the delta variant that swept the country in recent months, but are still gathering data on a pathogen first identified last week.
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https://www.startribune.com/friends-who-attended-convention-with-minn-man-who-contracted-omicron-tested-positive-official-says/600123623/
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