coronavirus pandemic

CDC Finds First Handful of U.S. Omicron Cases Have Been Mostly Mild

The agency's five-page report looked at 43 people in the U.S. with a confirmed case of the new strain

Patients wait to receive a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot at a mobile vaccination station on 59th Street below Central Park, Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021, in New York. Health officials say multiple cases of the omicron coronavirus variant have been detected in New York, including a man who attended an anime convention in Manhattan in late November and tested positive for the variant when he returned home to Minnesota.
AP Photo/John Minchillo

The first handful of omicron cases in the United States have been mostly mild, with most patients reporting symptoms such as cough or a runny nose, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The findings, published Friday, offer an early glimpse into how people might fare against the heavily mutated Covid-19 variant, now in at least 22 states, though health experts stress it's still too early to draw any strong conclusions on how it will spread in the country.

The agency's five-page report looked at 43 people in the U.S. with a confirmed case of the new strain, one of whom was hospitalized. More than half of the people were young, between the ages of 18 and 39.

UCLA's Dr. Timothy Brewer says coronavirus vaccine booster doses can help your immune system against the Omicron variant much better than your first and second shots. Immune systems that have received more doses are able to have "a broader response," he explains.

For more on this story, go to NBC News.

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