Omicron has come to Pueblo, the hub of southern Colorado. And while the spawn of COVID-19, the virus that has killed 830,000 Americans and five million worldwide, has not so far completely dropped anchor, health officials are monitoring its presence closely in this war that has been waged for more than two years.
It is a war that we’re seemingly equipped to fight, though strategies from nation to nation differ widely. It’s also, regrettably, one where certain of those among us refuse to pick up their weapons and, instead, choose to fight the invisible enemy unarmed.
Despite vaccines against the virus being available for more than a year, only 200 million Americans are today fully vaccinated. Compared to all world nations, the United States fails to reach the top twenty in vaccination rates. Gibraltar, the island nation, sits at the top of the list of vaccinated countries with a 97 percent rate. Only 62 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated against one more of these invisible enemies.
Omicron was first detected in late November in the African nation of Botswana though it is suspected the variant may already having been spreading two months earlier. The Associated Press reported that four individuals—all vaccinated—were infected. Researchers were shocked by how the variant had evolved from the parent virus, an indi- cation that the coronavirus will continue to evolve.
The first Omicron diagnosis in the U.S. was recorded in San Francisco on December 1st. But the hotspot now is New York where a record 85,000 cases per day are being logged. The current impact of the variant has created a memory of COVID’S darkest days of 2020.
In just over a month, Omicron has now been diagnosed in every U.S. state. Despite more than two years of learning about COVID now in the books no one is ready to even suggest victory is in sight.
Two days before Christmas, the Pueblo Department of Public Health and Environment announced that it had detected the Omicron Variant in the city’s wastewater. In a PDPHE news release, the agency said, “testing wastewater can give health officials early warning about increases or decreases in COVID-19 cases in a community.”
There, so far, have been no official cases of individuals affected by the variant in the county. But because of the area’s hot spike in COVID cases and deaths between September 2020 through the early part of 2021, the depart- ment is wasting neither time nor effort in warning the public. “There is evidence Omicron Variant will spread faster and cause higher levels of reinfection and vaccine- breakthrough compared to the delta variant,” said the county’s Public Health Director, Randy Evetts. The delta variant was the first offshoot of COVID-19.
Evetts also warned employers and schools to “expect rapid spread of the virus and subsequent high levels of absenteeism due to illness among staff and students in the first quarter of 2022.”
The Omicron Variant has landed in Colorado and the nation concurrent with the annual arrival of influenza. As a result, Evetts is also urging county residents to get a flu vaccine in order to “protect you and your family from flu and reduce the chances that you will require hospital care if you do contract influenza.”
The city has now two sites open for COVID testing. One is located at the Colorado State Fairgrounds at the corner of Mesa and Arroyo Avenues. It is open seven days a week between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. The other location is in the Pueblo Mall. It is operating with similar hours but is closed on Sunday.
The Centers for Disease Control believes the newest variant is likely to spread more quickly than any of its predecessors and vaccination offers no sure protection against contracting it. However, the CDC says, “vaccines are expected to protect against severe illness, hospitalizations, and deaths due to infection with the Omicron variant.”
The current buffet of vaccines, Moderna, J & J, and Pfizer, said the CDC “have remained effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalization and death.” Still, as we have learned, none of the vaccines have proven entirely effective in the prevention of new exposures or breakthrough exposures to the virus. Currently, the CDC recommends that everyone five years and older get fully vaccinated and that everyone 18 years or older get a booster shot at least two months after their initial vaccine.
For more information on Omicron or any COVID related news and information, visit pueblohealth.org. To get updated information on monitoring COVID-19 in Pueblo wastewater, visit https://covid19.colorado.gov/covid-19-monitoring-in-wastewater.
