CDC mum, as de Blasio and Pandemic Response Lab still can’t explain missing amine convention outbreak of Omicron variant

By Louis Flores

Updated 09 Dec 2021 14:45 The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are not answering questions about why they are conducting the contact tracing after the now-infamous anime convention in New York City last month, which was the reported source of the first detection of the Omicron variant in New York City. Progress New York sought clarification about the Agency’s role in shoring up public confidence in New York City’s handling of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. However, the CDC, as the top Federal health ministry is known, refused to answer advance questions submitted for this report.

The CNN cable news network published a report on Tuesday, disclosing that the CDC “has contacted more than 35,000 people so far who attended a recent anime convention in New York.” It’s not known why Federal health officials are conducting the work that is typically the responsibility of New York City Municipal health officials. An interview request made to the press office supporting Mayor Bill de Blasio (Working Families Party-New York City) has gone unanswered for several days.

None of the cluster of cases traced to the anime convention were reported by City health officials, raising new concerns about the City’s monitoring of the Coronavirus pandemic. After Progress New York published a series of reports, which raised questions about the City’s surveillance of Coronavirus variants, the New York Times published a report in July, warning that monitoring cutbacks by the de Blasio administration to the test and trace corps and other questions would put New York City in a position to be “ill prepared should more contagious forms of the virus cause new outbreaks.” The Omicron variant has been described to have over 30 mutations on its spike protein, leading scientists to fear that the new lineage may be more transmissible and capable of vaccine escape.

The cutbacks in monitoring in New York City followed a reported National allocation of $1,7 billion by the Biden White House to fund variant sequencing. A testing and sequencing company founded with assistance from the City, the Pandemic Response Lab, is now valued at $1,8 billion. Despite these resources, New York City trails in reported monitoring of variants.