Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that it is possible that the Omicron Covid-19 variant is already in the United States but has yet to be detected.
“I would not be surprised if it is, we have not detected it yet, but when you have a virus that is showing this degree of transmissibility and you're having travel-related cases they've noted in other places already, when you have a virus like this, it almost invariably is going to go all over,” Fauci told NBC Saturday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday said that to date no known Omicron cases have been identified in the US, and that if the variant emerges, the agency expects that cases would be quickly identified through the nation’s variant surveillance system.
"The issue of blocking travel from a given country is to just give us time to assess it better. That's the reason for doing that. Not any reason to panic, but we want to give it some time to really fill in the blanks of what we don't know right now,” Fauci added.
Although there is “not any reason to panic,” Fauci cautioned that the new variant is to be taken seriously and warrants the newly imposed travel ban against South Africa and seven neighboring countries.
“It may not turn out that way, but you want to be ahead of it. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing,” he told NBC.