A man tested positive for Omicron after attending an anime convention in New York. The event could provide the ‘earliest look’ into how the new variant spreads, the CDC said.

• An Anime convention could provide the first look into how the Omicron variant spreads, the CDC said.
• An attendee of the event in November was among the first in the US to test positive for Omicron.
• At least 35,000 people in attendance have been contacted to encourage testing, the CDC said. 

An anime convention held in New York in November could provide the first look into how the new Omicron variant spreads, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

An attendee of the three-day event became one of the first people in the US to test positive for the virus. The man, a Minnesota resident, had "mild symptoms" on November 22, got tested on November 24, and has since recovered, according to the CDC.

Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, said in a White House press briefing Tuesday that an investigation into infections at the convention "will likely provide some of the earliest looks in this country on the transmissibility of the variant."

The CDC, Minnesota, and New York City health departments have encouraged the 53,000 people who attended the convention to come forward and get tested.

So far, 35,000 attendees from 50 US states and 27 other countries have been contacted to encourage them to get tested, Walensky said. 

The Anime NYC convention ran between November 19 and November 21. The CDC didn't mention the vaccination status of the Minnesota man in its statement, but recommended that everyone older than five should get vaccinated and have a booster dose when eligible.

South Africa first reported the Omicron variant — which has 32 mutations in the part of the virus that infects human cells — to the World Health Organization (WHO) on November 24.

The variant has now been detected in 57 countries, but accounted for less than 0.1% of sequenced tests worldwide in the past 60 days, according to a WHO report released Wednesday.

For comparison, the highly infectious Delta variant has been picked up on 99.8% of sequenced tests over the same time period, the WHO said.

Clear-cut evidence on Omicron's severity, infectiousness, and existing vaccines' effectiveness against it hasn't yet emerged, the WHO report suggests, but scientists worldwide are racing to find out.