Dr. Anthony Fauci announced Wednesday afternoon in the White House briefing room that the first confirmed case of the “Omicron variant” of COVID-19 had been identified in California in an individual who recently returned from South Africa.

The individual had traveled to South Africa, returning on Nov. 22 and testing positive for the variant on Nov. 29. The individual was fully vaccinated; was experiencing mild symptoms; and no one in close contact had tested positive, Fauci said.

Fauci also said that genomic sequencing tests had been performed at the University of California San Francisco, and confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).