Although the discovery of the omicron variant of COVID-19 is fairly new, researchers have seen how quickly it can infect people.
You might be wondering how soon the symptoms of the omicron variant appear, or when those infected are most contagious.
Here is what you need to know.
How soon do omicron symptoms appear after the incubation period? How does omicron’s incubation period stack up to other variants?
People who developed symptoms from the original strain of COVID-19 typically got them five-to-six days after contracting the virus, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Other variants of COVID-19 such as the delta variant had an incubation period of four days.
But in cases of the omicron variant, the incubation period is much shorter — just three days, according to a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Because the omicron variant’s incubation period is much shorter than the initial strain, people who are infected are most contagious.
And, according to the CDC, most people are contagious one-to-two days before symptoms appear and two-to-three days after they appear.
“As we’ve seen these new variants develop — delta, now omicron — what we’re seeing is everything gets sped up from a COVID perspective,” Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady told NBC Chicago Thursday.
“It is taking less time from when someone is exposed to COVID to potentially develop infection. It is taking less time to develop symptoms, it is taking less time that someone may be infectious and it is, for many people, taking less time to recover. A lot of that is because many more people are vaccinated.”
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