Five cases of COVID-19 caused by the Omicron variant have been detected in New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Thursday. The cases are not all located in one place, with one in Brooklyn, another in Queens, and another on Long Island. It is not yet clear whether those infected had been vaccinated. The new, possibly more transmissible variant was first detected in South Africa; the U.S. government banned travel from that country and seven others in an attempt to keep the variant out. Omicron cases have been found in San Francisco and Minnesota, and the man infected with it in Minnesota had recently traveled to an anime convention in New York City.