WA Virology Labs On 'Close Watch' As Omicron Arrives In U.S.

SEATTLE — The omicron coronavirus variant has officially been detected in the United States. Researchers on Wednesday identified the variant in a California patient who had recently traveled from South Africa.

In Washington, state health leaders say it's almost an inevitability that the new variant will be detected within our borders — and that it may already be here — but say that, when it does arrive, Washington will be ready for it.

"This is not a time to be panicking or overly concerned," said Washington Secretary of Health Dr. Umair A. Shah at the Department of Health's weekly COVID-19 briefing Wednesday.

UW Medicine’s Virology Laboratory is one of several labs working with the state Department of Health to sequence and catalog COVID-19 variants. Organizers say the lab is now on "close watch" for omicron, and prepared to find the virus sometime in the coming days or weeks.

"I think that it is probably already here," said Pavitra Roychoudhur, Acting Instructor with the UW School of Medicine. "It's likely at pretty low frequency right now, given that we haven't picked it up in samples from the last couple of weeks. So, I think it's a matter of time given how connected the world is, given how much travel has been occurring over the last few weeks and months."

UW's Virology Laboratory sequences about 2,000 test samples per week.

“Our ability to sequence a large number of samples every week has certainly bolstered the confidence that we will find this variant," Roychoudhury said.

Until omicron is identified, Shah, Roychoudhur, and other health leaders say the more immediate concern remains the delta variant, which still makes up the overwhelming majority of Washington's current COVID-19 cases

"We have to remember that even though we are hearing about this new variant omicron, 99.9 percent of all sequences remain delta," Roychoudhur said. "Delta is a formidable virus, and so we have to remember that. And while we panic about potential new variants in the future, we still have to deal with the one that is currently circulating widely in the population."

Omicron is officially a "variant of concern" but health leaders say the concern is largely because so much about it is unknown — and not because the virus appears particularly infectious or dangerous. Early reports suggest that omicron cases are about as severe as delta or other variants, and the biggest worry is whether or not current COVID-19 vaccines will effectively prevent against omicron. At Wednesday's conference, Shah said he expected they would, and continued to urge Washingtonians to seek out vaccination or booster shots as necessary.

"There are a lot of things we don't know about this new variant, but what we do know is that vaccines work," Shah said. "When it comes to this new variant, we recognize that vaccine effectiveness will be there for this new variant, we just don't know to what degree."

Another reason not to be overly concerned about omicron, health leaders say, is that Washington already learned a lot while handling the delta surge.

"I think that we're in a much better spot than we were a year ago," Roychoudhury said. "We are doing a lot more genomic surveillance and sequencing that have allowed us to detect this variant more quickly, share those genomes with the world. And we have the tools that we already know that work against not just this variant, but all other variants, you know, with the vaccines and with masking and social distancing, all the other things that we already know to work."