While no deaths linked to omicron have been reported so far, little is known for certain about the variant, including whether it is more contagious, more likely to cause serious illness or more able to evade vaccines.
It moved to the 15th letter in the Greek alphabet, Omicron.
More generally, the letter omicron is used to mark the fifteenth ordinal position in any Greek-alphabet marked list.
In his remarks, he urged Americans to get vaccine booster shots if they had not yet done so.
Read more about we find ourselves in and how people-powered, independent reporting can and must rise to the challenge—and please support our team's truth-telling journalism with a donation if you can right now.
A dictionary is not available for this language at this time.