Omicron monitoring key as Alberta seeks to manage new, concerned variant

Key takeaways: 

• 11 cases of omicron shave have been affirmed in Alberta.
• Kanti Pabbaraju is a lab specialist who manages a specialized diagnostics unit at Alberta Precision Laboratories.
• The unit has advanced screening tests for early variants of worry.

Alberta records 11 cases of the Omicron variant: 

As Alberta’s omicron case number ticks up, scientists at the regional lab are running to recognise cases and planning for the feasibility of the new variant could take grip in the region.

As of Monday evening, Alberta Health had recorded a whole of 11 cases of omicron, 10 of which were recognised in returning passengers and one in a household touch of a passenger.

According to Alberta Health, each of the people who have tested positive has moderate symptoms and are healing at home.

The region had recorded a total of 12 cases first in the day but changed the match after receiving word one of the positive cases is not an Alberta citizen.

The identification of these cases has taken no one at the rural lab by surprise.

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“We were fully expecting it. We were ready for that,” stated Dr Graham Tipples, medical-scientific director of the Alberta Precision Laboratories public health lab. Source – cbc.ca

“We know when we hear about things internationally that we immediately start planning and figuring out how we would deal with it if arrived in Alberta, and sure enough, it came pretty quickly.” Source – cbc.ca

One important action required continuing screening all positive COVID-19 cases for important variants of worry on Nov. 24 as worries about omicron developed.

The lab finished doing that on Sept. 10 as case counts rose during Alberta’s fourth wave, and concentrated on targeted screening of organisations including passengers and hospitalized patients, rather.

With no fast screening test for the omicron variant, all cases that come back negative for delta during that primary screening test are instantly sent on for more complex genome sequencing to see for omicron.