Florida has nearly half of the known US cases

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

This news comes as Florida once again broke its previous one-day record of coronavirus cases, adding nearly 20,000 infected people to its caseload on Thursday.

The variant that surfaced in Britain was discovered 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 provide a breakdown of counties or specific locations within the state in which the variant was reported.

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

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

The World Health Organization says scientists first discovered the British variant in September. Doctors are still researching the variant, but the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are still believed to be effective.

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

“On that basis, we are quite confident that at present, with the current new variant from the UK, the vaccines will still be very effective,” she said. “We have to do studies with the people who have had the vaccines to be 100% sure about that, but it looks very, very good as we already know that these vaccines produce better immunity than even that of having it. the virus. . “

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