New COVID-19 variant ‘concerning’ for Arizona health leaders

A new COVID-19 variant has the world buzzing, but Arizona officials say it’s too soon to worry about it just yet.

This past Friday, the World Health Organization designated the newly-detected omicron variant as a “variant of concern” after it was first identified in South Africa and on Monday said that consequences of a future surge of the variant could have “severe consequences.”

It’s the latest variant named after a letter in the Greek alphabet, following in the footsteps of delta and beta. Within days, countries around the world shut their borders out to several southern Africa countries in an effort to stop the spread, including the U.S. But unlike the previous two variants, omicron has yet to be found in COVID-19 cases in the U.S. Canada recorded its first positive case of the variant on Monday, making it the first instance of omicron in North America thus far.