Omicron is here. Thursday evening, New York officials announced that they had detected five cases of the omicron variant in New York State.

One is a 67-year-old woman in Suffolk County with some vaccination history, but it's unclear if she was fully inoculated or boosted. Two were found in people in Queens, one in a person in Brooklyn and the other case is someone in an unreported location in New York City. Their vaccine statuses and current symptoms weren't provided by Governor Hochul and Mayor de Blasio who announced all of these findings at a joint briefing yesterday evening.

Much of what they said came as no surprise, as health experts have widely anticipated that omicron would arrive in the United States and spread through local communities. But what does it all mean for New Yorkers, as they enjoy the winter holidays. Many were just getting adjusted to at least a partial return to public life, but cases and hospitalizations are surging due to the delta variant, which has been the globally dominant COVID scourge since this spring.   

A lot is still unknown about how and if the omicron variant will alter the course of the pandemic. So, Morning Edition host Michael Hill spoke with Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at NYU and Bellevue Hospital.

Click listen in the player.