Known cases of more contagious ‘UK variant’ COVID virus double in Florida, CDC says
A more contagious and slightly deadlier version of the COVID virus appears to be taking off in Florida, where the number of known cases doubled in the last week.
The B.1.1.7 strain, also called the “U.K. variant,” was first discovered in southern England in September and has raised alarms among scientists since. In Florida, cases jumped from 46 to 92, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which updated the data on Monday evening. Florida has led the country in known cases since last week, though California trails closely with 90 known cases.
The updated case numbers came one day after the nation’s top infectious disease expert and chief medical adviser for President Joe Biden’s new administration drew attention to the mutated version.
“We need to assume now that what has been circulating dominantly in the U.K. does have a certain degree of increase in what we call virulence, namely the power of the virus to cause more damage, including death,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
The concerns over the virus being more deadly arose on Friday when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the research findings at a press conference. England’s chief scientific adviser said that among 1,000 men in England 60 years of age or older who got infected, the original virus would kill 10, but the new variant would kill 13 or 14, leading to a roughly 30% rise in mortality, though the absolute risk of death remains low.
Scientists are increasingly confident that the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines will still work against the UK variant, but there is developing concern about two other known variants.
Florida health officials say they are extensively monitoring for mutating versions of the COVID virus, though the number of samples examined by scientists was unclear on Monday. In addition to the UK strain, scientists are also concerned by a variant out of South Africa, which is thought to have a mutation that could impact vaccine efficacy, and another variant out of Brazil, which carries that same mutation.
Moderna, one of the vaccine manufacturers, said it believes that despite the mutation, its vaccine would remain effective, but it also plans to work on a booster shot to address the evolving virus.
Researchers in South Florida have decided not to rely on federal and state efforts, launching their own hunt for all known mutated versions of the virus in Miami-Dade’s public hospital, Jackson Health System.
On Monday, Dr. David Andrews, who heads that effort, said the health system was already working to confirm cases of the U.K. variant in Jackson by running samples through the public hospital’s testing platform and looking for a missing signal that could indicate the presence of the mutant virus.
