Experts are surprised but cautiously optimistic as new cases of coronavirus in Florida continue to decline despite the large prevalence of the British ‘super COVID’ variant there, suggesting the US could escape a new boom fueled by viral mutations .
Florida now leads the country in confirmed cases of the B117 variant, which now accounts for the estimated half of all new cases there, but since the beginning of January a 75% decrease in total cases.
This comes despite serious warnings from British officials that the B117 variant is up to 70 percent more contagious than previous strings, and new research suggests that it is twice as deadly, sparking fears that a varying surge in vaccine rollout can exceed.
“I think we’re just watching the data. If cases in Florida continue to decline despite the spread of variants, the variant may not be as bad as predicted, ‘said Suzanne Judd, a PhD epidemiologist at the University of Alabama at the School of Public Health in Birmingham. , told DailyMail.com.
“That’s why we should avoid speculating about variants until we have the data,” she added.
“If cases in Florida continue to decline despite the spread of variants, the variant may not be as bad as predicted,” PhD epidemiologist Suzanne Judd (not pictured) told DailyMail.com. Above, the springbreakers descend Thursday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Florida leads the country in confirmed variant cases, and the B117 variant covers about half of all new cases there
Yet new business in Florida continued to decline, up 75% from early January, despite warnings of the doomsday over the Super Bowl and the weakening of business restrictions.
“The good news from Florida is an encouraging sign for the rest of us. That does not mean America is out of the woods. “But it shows that we can show up sooner than we thought,” Andrew Romano wrote to Yahoo News.
Florida is the leader in the country with 690 confirmed cases of the B117 variant – but surveillance tests estimate that the actual number of variant cases is much higher.
Earlier this week, researchers estimated that B117 has reached more than half of all new business in Florida, after making up just 4 percent of the business a month ago.
But meanwhile, the number of cases in Florida has dropped, despite the doomsday predictions about the state’s low restrictions on business, and the big events for Super Bowl LV in Tampa in early February.
Florida’s latest COVID surge peaked on Jan. 8 with 84 daily new cases per 100,000 residents, but the cases gradually dropped to 22 per 100,000 on Thursday.
Hospitalizations also declined by half over the same period, as did the positive percentage of Florida, which is now at 4.88 percent. Deaths also declined sharply.
The percentage of Florida sightings with an S-target failure, the vast majority of which are B117 cases, is above 50% above this week.
Deaths have dropped sharply in Florida as hospitalizations and cases have also declined.
Meanwhile, 18.5 percent of Floridians have received at least one dose of COVID vaccine, and 10 percent are now fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.
Judd, the epidemiologist, pointed out that data from Israel showed that even partial vaccination appears to limit the spread of B117, suggesting that vaccination of vaccines would arrive just in time.
‘While the variant spread rapidly in the UK, there was little data on how it would spread in the population with some vaccination,’ she said.
Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and researcher, calls the trend in Florida “a bell to know if the B.1.1.7 strain will hit the United States.”
‘And there is no sign of an increase in business. So far so good, ‘he tweeted this week.
Meanwhile, worrying new researchers have emerged suggesting that the B117 variant, also known as the ‘Kent variant’ in the UK, is more deadly and also more contagious.
College students came to Florida during the spring break with beaches in Fort Lauderdale, full of maskless revelers. Florida is the B117 capital of the USA but has less
The more contagious variant, which migrated through the UK late last year before spreading around the world, is between 30 and 100 per cent more deadly, a new study has found.
Epidemiologists from the Universities of Exeter and Bristol said the data suggested that the variant was associated with a significantly higher mortality rate among adults compared to previously circulating strains.
Robert Challen, of the University of Exeter, lead author of the study, said: ‘In the community, the death of Covid-19 is still a rare occurrence, but the B117 variant increases the risk.
“Together with its ability to spread rapidly, it makes B117 a threat that needs to be taken seriously.”
Researchers looked at mortality rates among people infected with the new variant and those infected with other strains.
They found that the variant first detected in Kent resulted in 227 deaths in a sample of 54,906 patients – compared with 141 among the same number of patients who were the fit at the previous pass.
Mutations of the virus have raised concerns about whether vaccines against the new strains, including the B117 strain, will be effective.
But research suggests that the Pfizer jab is just as effective against the coronavirus variant as it was against the original pandemic strain, and other studies suggest that the Moderna vaccine is also very effective against the variant.