WASHINGTON — Just hours after Minnesota public health officials confirmed the nation’s second case of the Omicron variant, President Biden unveiled a “winter plan” intended to combat the new coronavirus strain in the coming months.

“We’re going to fight this variant with science and speed, not chaos and confusion,” Biden said at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., after meeting with his top pandemic advisers.

Shortly after he finished speaking, a new case of the Omicron variant was detected in Colorado, a potent reminder that keeping up with the pathogen’s relentless pace continues to be a challenge.

People at a walk-up vaccination site in Washington, D.C., on Monday. (Jim Watson/AFP