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The variant, known as Omicron, was identified in the U.S. the following week, and then, as Cornell students returned from Thanksgiving travel to wrap up their semester in Ithaca, it became home to one of the country's "first superspreader" events, according to Dr. Eric Topol, the director and founder of Scripps research translational institute. 

"It's a perfect storm, you have people that are doing a lot of networking and gathering and at the same time, have a highly infectious variant," he said. Without arrival testing, students may have unknowingly spread the virus at end of semester celebrations, holiday outings and other "social gatherings" that may have also increased the spread

While the University is still testing the samples of students that tested positive to confirm how many cases are the Omicron variant, Topol said that the steep rise in cases within the Cornell community -- which is 97 percent vaccinated -- is telling that the Omicron variant is at play. 

Preliminary evidence from the Tompkins County Health Department does show "a high rate of Omicron transmission amongst the 18-24 Cornell University student population and additional prevalence amongst the wider community," according to a release from Frank Kruppa, the public health director.

"The initial batch of positive results from the 18-24 population, prioritized for sequencing due to the rapid spread observed and indication of Omicron, resulted in all 115 samples being confirmed cases of the variant," Kruppa wrote. "These results indicate that the primary spread amongst this population is due to the more transmissible Omicron variant."

Topol and others said the outbreak at Cornell is a dire precursor of what's to come in the rest of the United States. If the variant could take hold in such a highly vaccinated community of younger people -- with 97 percent of the on-campus population vaccinated -- who are less likely to become severely ill, and spread so quickly despite weekly surveillance testing, cases elsewhere in the country could also skyrocket.

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