Omicron-variant cases have been found in New York and LA, officials say

• Five Omicron-variant cases have been found in New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Thursday.
• One Omicron case has been found in Los Angeles.

Cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant have been detected in New York and Los Angeles, officials in both areas said on Thursday.

All five of the cases in New York were found in the New York City metropolitan area. Officials disclosed the locations of the cases:

• One case in Suffolk County, Long Island, where a 67-year-old woman "with some vaccination history" who recently had been to South Africa contracted the virus variant.
• Two cases in Queens.
• One case in Brooklyn.
• One "suspected traveler case" of someone who was in "one of the five boroughs."

Officials said it was not known if four of the people were vaccinated.

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said at a briefing on Thursday that the cases were "no cause for alarm" but that health officials "are taking this extremely seriously from the public-health perspective" and "not complacent," Politico reported.

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City said at the briefing that people should assume the variant was spreading in New York and should take measures like getting vaccinated and wearing masks.

Los Angeles Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, meanwhile, said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times on Thursday that one case of the variant had been found in an LA resident.

County officials told the LA Times that the infection was found in a fully vaccinated person who had flown to South Africa via London on November 22.

Omicron has a large number of mutations, and scientists are concerned.

The variant's mutations increase the chances that it will be more transmissible, escape the immune protection from vaccines or previous infection, or cause symptoms that are different from other variants. But it's not yet clear if Omicron does any of these things.

As of Friday, the variant had been found in at least 28 countries.

Omicron has also been detected in Colorado, Minnesota, and Hawaii.