This variant is not a new wave of COVID, but a tsunami By Angela Rogalski The Bolivar Bullet From Alpha to Delta and now Omicron, COVID-19 variants are continuing to mutate, causing surges and health havocs with each one. And unfortunately, Omicron has proven to be right on track with the pattern, bringing positivity rates up in some cases over 30%. Dr. Scott Nelson is a Board-Certified Family Medicine physician in Cleveland. Nelson said the Omicron variant is definitely making a big difference in the numbers when it comes to positive cases of COVID. “When people ask me about this new “wave” of COVID, I tell them it’s not a new wave, it’s a tsunami,” said Nelson. “The Omicron variant is making up roughly about two-thirds of the new cases that are being reported in Mississippi. For example, the morning of January 5, 2022, we were looking at a little over 4,800 new cases just that day. So that is a massive spike in cases going on in Mississippi.” Nelson said people can go to the Mississippi State Department of Health’s website https://msdh.ms.gov and track the daily case numbers.  Nelson said that we weren’t anywhere near the end of this particular surge, “We have weeks and weeks to go before this Omicron wave begins to settle down.” And, with Omicron being much more contagious, Nelson stresses getting your vaccines, boosters, wearing a mask when indicated, washing your hands often and social distancing has never been more important. “Its mutation has caused it to be much more contagious, some studies have estimated at least 50% more than the Delta variant, but it does seem to have a silver lining in that in the preliminary findings it seems to be somewhat less severe. Of course, being fully vaccinated and getting your booster plays into that severity. So, get your vaccinations and your boosters because we do know that if you’ve been vaccinated and if you have some prior immunity, even from a natural infection, it appears your risk of getting seriously ill is substantially less than someone who has no immunity.” Ashley Williams is director of Infection Prevention and Employee Health at North Sunflower Medical Center. Williams said at NSMC, Omicron has sent positivity rates soaring to new heights. “We’re doing rapid antigen tests on our patients right now,” she explained. “So we can get results back on that pretty quickly. However, with the volume of people we are seeing, those wait times can be longer. We cannot detect the type of variant we’re seeing with this test, but I can tell you that this increase in positivity rates started very suddenly for us when the Omicron variant was detected.  “For me, I came in the Monday before Christmas and things were pretty normal; I had three positives that day, nothing too extreme. By the next day, the positive cases doubled. But, on December 23, I had 16 positives out of 123 tests, so that was a 13% positivity rate. On December