The COVID-19 omicron variant has been reported in nearly half of the U.S. states since it was first detected in California on Dec. 1. The second known case of omicron in the country was identified in Minnesota.
"People that detect omicron — states, counties, countries — that doesn't necessarily mean that they were the first to have it," says Dr. Bobbi Pritt, director of Mayo Clinic's Division of Clinical Microbiology. "It is just that they were one of the first to detect it. In Minnesota, we were one of the first states to detect the presence of the omicron variant. And that's because we sequence a large number of our COVID-19 positive specimens. We have a very good sequencing system in place."
Mayo Clinic Laboratories has been working with Minnesota state health officials and other academic medical centers looking for new variants by analyzing the virus's genetic code.
For more, watch Dr. Bobbi Pritt talk about genome sequencing COVID-19 variants.
For the safety of its patients, staff and visitors, Mayo Clinic has strict masking policies in place. Anyone shown without a mask was recorded prior to COVID-19 or recorded in an area not designated for patient care, where social distancing and other safety protocols were followed.
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