1st case of the British coronavirus variant in Jacksonville

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. The Duval County Department of Health confirmed on Friday that one case of the COVID variant first identified in the UK has been found in Jacksonville. But health experts warn that the number could actually be much higher.

According to data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated Thursday night, 347 cases of this B.1.1.7 variant were found in Florida. That more than one-third of the 981 cases identified so far in the United States.

Last week, according to the CDC, 825,000 cases of COVID-19 were identified in the United States, while only an average of 6,000 samples each week receive the genomic sequence needed to detect the variant.

While standard COVID-19 tests return within hours or a few days, additional tests to identify the variant take much longer, according to director of infectious disease Chad Neilsen, UF Health.

“If I were to send it to a referral center in our hospital – if I were to send it today, I would probably not get any results for a few weeks,” Neilsen said.

This is because only specially equipped laboratories can test the variants.

“The vast majority of those (347 cases) are actually followed up outside of Florida – in a research center in California,” Neilsen said. “We simply do not have the strong capacity in Florida or the United States to do so on a large scale.”

Neilsen believes we have seen most cases in Florida because many people travel here.

“You also have a variety of laws and mandates in each province, and I think that prevents us as a state from controlling COVID,” Neilsen said.

If there is good news, it is according to both a spokesman for the health department that both vaccines currently being given to senior citizens and health workers are effective against the variant.

Research published Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that a variant only identified in the Los Angeles area last year accounted for about 44% of Southern California cases by the end of January, almost double that. a month before. Study co-author Jasmine Plummer, a researcher at Cedars-Sinai, said more research is needed to determine if the variant spreads more easily than other COVID-19 variants or causes more disease.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading expert in infectious diseases, wrote in an accompanying editorial that new variants are likely to appear until the spread of the virus is reduced.

This announcement of a variant in Jacksonville comes one day after a student at the University of Central Florida diagnosed the British variant of the coronavirus, which is presumably easier to transmit. The unidentified student tested positive this week, UCF Student Health Services vice president Michael Deichen said in a statement on the university’s website on Thursday.

The University of Orlando is one of the largest in the country with more than 66,000 students. According to the officials of the university, the student was isolated and the detection of contact measures was taken.

“The tools we use to fight this variant do not differ from the steps we have taken for almost a year,” Deichen said. “COVID-19 and these new variants are not easily transferable if face covers are worn properly not; maintained, and hands are regularly cleaned. “

The Department of Health in Florida announced the first case of the UK variant of the UK at the end of last year and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state has now led the country in cases of the variant, with nearly 350 confirmed diagnoses.

Tens of thousands of university students across the country have tested positive for the virus, and some campuses have seen nails in cases where students return to campus.

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