B.C. confirms 1st case of Omicron COVID-19 variant

One case of the concerning Omicron COVID-19 variant has been confirmed in British Columbia, health officials announced Tuesday.

One case of the concerning Omicron COVID-19 variant has been confirmed in British Columbia, health officials announced Tuesday.

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said the infected individual lives in the Fraser Health region, which spans from Burnaby to Boston Bar, and recently returned from Nigeria.

That individual is isolating while public health follows up with all of their close contacts.

So far, 204 people across the province have been identified as having recently travelled to Omicron-affected countries. Each one has been contacted over recent days, sent for PCR testing and told to isolate.

Henry said B.C.'s first Omicron case was identified thanks to the province's "robust" program of whole genome sequencing, which is performed on every COVID-19 infection associated with a recent traveller as well as a proportion of all new cases.

"We can be confident that we're not seeing widespread transmission of this variant in B.C. yet," Henry added.

Omicron has sent countries around the world scrambling to impose new travel restrictions and other measures to limit the spread as researcher work to determine how its numerous mutations impact transmissibility, severity of illness, and possible vaccine resistance.