You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey critters, I'm Lily Quang here.

Okay, so the Oma Cron variant may be the latest plot twist in this pandemic, but remember,

we have better tools for fighting COVID-19 than we did last year, and more are coming.

And Pierre Health Reporter Ping Huang is here to talk about what is next for treatments.

Hello, Emily.

Hi Ping, so good to see you.

Great to hear you and see you a little bit too.

So in the last few weeks, Oma Cron has been spreading and there's increasing evidence

that it has characteristics that it can evade the immune system better than Delta.

So if someone's gotten COVID, they could still get this variant and they could have a breakthrough

infection from it, even if they've gotten the vaccine.

There's more evidence too, but it spreads more quickly than the Delta variant.

Yes, this has been hard news to digest.

I got to be honest.

Last week we talked to Alice in Aubrey before Oma Cron was spotted in the US.

It's now been detected in several states.

First came California, the first confirmed US case of the coronavirus variant Oma Cron.

But then like a series of dominoes falling, came more cases identified in Colorado, Minnesota,

New York, Hawaii.

And in response, the Biden administration has urged fully vaccinated people to get a booster

since boosters raised your antibody levels.

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