Florida has almost half of known cases in the United States

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida – The Centers for Disease Control says Florida has nearly half of the known cases in the United States of a mutated and possibly more contagious strain of the coronavirus.

The news comes as Florida again broke its previous one-day high of coronavirus cases, adding nearly 20,000 infected people to its number of cases on Thursday.

The variant that emerged in Britain was detected last week in a Martin County man in his 20s.

The CDC says Florida now has 22 cases of the mutated virus. California has 26 cases, Colorado has 2, and New York and Georgia have each reported 1 case of the new variant.

The CDC’s map of cases caused by variants can be viewed by clicking here.

The map does not break down specific counties or locations in the state in which the variant was reported.

Florida broke its record for the largest single-day increase in COVID-19 cases two days in a row, with state health officials reporting an additional 19,816 cases on Thursday after 17,783 new cases on Wednesday.

Miami-Dade County accounted for 3,373 of the new confirmed cases in Florida on Thursday.

The World Health Organization said scientists first detected the British variant in September. Doctors are still looking for the variant, but Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are still believed to be effective.

Dr Aileen Marty, an infectious disease specialist at Florida International University, told Local 10 News earlier this week that studies comparing the blood of people who have recovered from the original strain with the variant show that those who developed good antibodies had antibodies which also seemed to neutralize the new strain.

“Based on that, we’re pretty confident that the vaccines currently, with the current UK new variant, will still be very effective,” she said. “We have to do studies with the people who have received the vaccines to be 100% sure about it, but it sounds very, very good since we already know that these vaccines produce better immunity than even having had the virus. . “

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