Florida COVID-19 variant cases have doubled, CDC says

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

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

The CDC does not specify the locations of those cases within states.

The number of confirmed variant cases in Florida is the most in the county, with California close to 90.

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

Other mutant versions are circulating in South Africa and Brazil. The variant from Brazil was first discovered in the US in a Minnesota resident who recently traveled to the South American country, health officials said Monday.

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

To guard against the new variants, President Joe Biden added South Africa on Monday to the list of more than two dozen countries whose residents are subject to coronavirus-related limits upon entry into the US.

Most non-US citizens who have been to Brazil, Ireland, Great Britain and other European countries will be denied entry to the US under the rules re-imposed by Biden after President Donald Trump moved to relax them.

Fauci said scientists are already preparing to modify COVID-19 vaccines to combat the mutated versions.

He said there is “a very slight, modest decrease” in the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against those variants, but “there is enough cushion with the vaccines we have that we still consider them effective” against both.

Moderna, the maker of one of two vaccines in use in the US, announced on Monday that it will begin testing a possible booster dose against the South African variant. Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said the move was not “an abundance of caution” after preliminary lab tests suggested the shot triggered a weaker immune response to that variant.

Florida had verified 1,658,169 COVID-19 cases on Monday since the outbreak started and 25,446 deaths by residents, according to the state’s Department of Health.