Florida’s COVID-19 variant cases have doubled, says CDC

Florida has twice as many confirmed cases of a COVID-19 variant as last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in new numbers released Monday, raising concerns that a more contagious strain is spreading.

The latest CDC data show 293 confirmed cases of COVID-19 caused by variants in the United States. Of those, 92 are in Florida – which is twice as many as the 46 cases confirmed in the state last week.

The CDC does not specify the location of the cases within states.

The number of confirmed cases in Florida is the highest in the province, with California in the background.

Health experts have warned that the more contagious and potentially deadly variant flushing through Britain is likely to become the dominant source of infection in the US in March.

Other mutant versions do the distribution in South Africa and Brazil. The Brazilian variant was first spotted in the U.S. in a Minnesota resident who recently traveled to the South American country, state health officials said Monday.

The more the virus spreads, the more opportunities it has to mutate. The fear is that it will eventually make the vaccines ineffective.

To guard against the new variant, President Joe Biden on Monday added South Africa to the list of more than two dozen countries whose residents are subject to coronavirus-related restrictions to enter the US.

Most non-US citizens who have been to Brazil, Ireland, Britain and other European countries will be barred from entering the US under the rules that Biden reintroduced after President Donald Trump moved to slacken them.

According to Fauci, scientists are already adapting COVID-19 vaccines to fight the mutated versions.

He said that the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines against these variants is a very small, modest reduction, but that there is a sufficient cushion for the vaccines that we still consider to be effective against both.

Moderna, the manufacturer of one of the two vaccines used in the USA, announced on Monday that it is starting to test a possible booster dose against the South African variant. Stepherna Bancel, CEO of Moderna, said the move was from an ‘abundance of caution’ after preliminary laboratory tests suggested the shot had a weaker immune response to the variant.

According to the Department of Health, Florida on Monday verified 1,658,169 cases of COVID-19 since the outbreak began, killing 25,446 residents.