Omicron is here. There was just an announcement that 5 cases are confirmed in NYC. My question is how do they know?
What is the mechanism for testing for variants? Say 1,000 people in NYC test positive for COVID today. Do they have the ability to tell which variant each have? Do they have to do extra tests? Will all tests now test for omicron? Of course the news today is about one specific variant but I’m interested in general about testing for any variant.
I’m sure others will be along with more info, but here’s the quick version. They can do genetic sequencing, which is supposed to be done for some X% of cases. This is how they watch for variants in general.
With omicron in particular, there’s a common PCR test where one of the proteins won’t react, but the others will, meaning that they can test it much more quickly with an existing test. As long as they use that test, then you get variant testing for free with the testing you would do normally anyways.
With others, I suspect they would have to come up with a test that would be specific for the variant to avoid having to sequence each one.