Florida is finding more COVID-19 variants in the UK, Brazil and South America

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The CDC’s updated number of cases of COVID-19 variants shows that Florida verified new cases of three separate strains this week.

That includes two more cases of the British variant discovered since Sunday, two more cases of the Brazilian variant, and an additional case of the variant initially identified in South Africa.

The latest totals show 1,042 British (B.1.1.7) cases confirmed in Florida, 23 Brazilian (P.1) variant cases and 10 South African (B.1.351).

Infectious disease experts say the totals represent a relatively small percentage of the actual number of variant cases out there, as not all COVID-19 samples are sequenced to detect variants.

Florida remains the state with the most confirmed variant cases. Michigan is the only other state with more than 900.

California, Texas, and Massachusetts each have more than 400 and all other states are below that.

Advertisement

Local 10 News has sent multiple requests to the Florida health department for an updated breakdown of the counties in which the variant cases are located.

Each time those numbers have been released before, they have shown that South Florida has by far the greatest concentration of cases.

Experts fear that spring break visitors congregating in South Florida could contribute to the spread and then transport those variants further to other communities.

The Orlando Sentinel last week sued the health department for information by county, and it showed that as of March 17, Broward had the most confirmed variant cases (307), followed by Miami-Dade (129) and Palm Beach County (75).

Monroe County had no verified variants at the time.

Advertisement

Those numbers were before the CDC confirmed that Florida had passed a total of 1,000 variant cases over the weekend, around the same time the state had passed a total of 2 million COVID-19 cases.

Click here to see the latest variant data from the CDC.