Do you find out if it’s omicron?

[NellNorth]

My husband (52) and son (14) have had positive PCR results last Sunday and Monday here in Scotland. Dh had his booster on Tuesday and started with symptoms on Friday. He had night sweats, moderately high temps and achy muscles for 3 days. He’s been able to work from home all the way, and my son didn’t feel a thing.
We would love to know if it’s omicron, but I don’t know if people are being told if they have the new variant. We were contacted by test and trace, but they just asked the same questions that had already been asked in the online form, pretty pointless actually.
Has anyone been told they have omicron?

I am curious about this too. Does anyone know if they test every test for each variant??

Last I read they were sampling 20% for variant testing but I haven't read much this week.

I’d like to know about this too. I know loads of people that tested positive recently, but none were told whether it was Delta or Omicron.
Makes me wonder whether Omicron numbers are actually far higher than what is being reported.

Are the isolation rules different in Scotland if it’s omicron vs another variant?
They’ve removed the rule in England that you have to isolate even if vaccinated if you’re a contact of omicron, so I doubt they’d bother with the time it takes following up with everyone to tell them when they don’t really need to know. No one was routinely told whether they had delta when that first appeared I don’t think.

All the family ( close contacts) have to isolate after a positive, so it’s back to the original rules here in Scotland. There are six of us locked down for 10 days. All the Covid measures are one or two steps more severe, but I don’t think it has kept our numbers any lower.

At some labs they can tell because omicron (like alpha) shows an s antigen drop out but I don't think all labs can distinguish. They also do a certain amount of sequencing. It's how they found alpha in the first place - slightly odd results on PCR.

@NellNorth

All the family ( close contacts) have to isolate after a positive, so it’s back to the original rules here in Scotland. There are six of us locked down for 10 days. All the Covid measures are one or two steps more severe, but I don’t think it has kept our numbers any lower.

So you isolate whether it’s omicron or not? I doubt they’ll tell you then. And if it is going to be the dominant strain fairly soon, people will soon be able to just assume they have it, like a month ago they’d have assumed delta.

I did read that night sweats were a more distinctive symptom of omicron though.