On Monday a vaccine free man with underlying health conditions died in Texas after testing positive for the COVID-19 omicron variant. Officials in Houston said it marked what is believed to be the first death linked to the strain in the U.S.
The first person to incorrectly claim that the man died of the Omicron variant was Texas’ Harris County judge Lina Hidalgo. On December 20th she tweeted that the resident man was the first fatality from the omicron variant.
Dan Cohen a journalist with Mint Press News called the Harris County Public Health department and was told, “We can’t confirm that the patient died from Covid, but we can say that he was Omicron positive at the time of his death.”
Listen to the audio of the phone call below:
The variant was first identified in South Africa last month, but has since spread widely across the globe.
While the omicron strain is supposedly highly transmissible, there has yet to be a single American who’s has died from it.
