Florida confirms first case of more contagious U.K. strain of virus

The Florida Department of Health tweeted that the case was found in a man who is in his 20s and lives in Martin County. Health officials said he has no history of travel.

The Florida Department of Health reported the first case in the state of the “U.K. Variant,” which is the more contagious strain of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

On Thursday night, the Department of Health tweeted that the case was found in a man who is in his 20s and lives in Martin County, the county north of Palm Beach County. Health officials said the man has no history of travel. The DOH is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the investigation.

Medical experts have said they anticipate little to no impact by the variant on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

Health officials are encouraging everyone to continue practicing COVID-19 safety measures.

The variant, which was first detected in the United Kingdom, is a mutated and more contagious strain of the novel coronavirus as evidenced by its rapid spread across southern England. Some scientists have attributed the mutation to the virus strain producing more copies of itself in the respiratory tracts of infected people.

Scientists anticipated that the SARSCoV-2 coronavirus would mutate. In fact, at least 33 countries have identified the more contagious strain, according to a report Friday in The New York Times.

The United Kingdom is monitoring virus mutations more than other countries.

About half of the 350,000 known sequences of the virus have come from Britain.

The U.K. strain has also been discovered in two other U.S. states: Colorado and California. In those states, public-health officials appear to be collecting more samples of the virus and analyzing them to see if the genetics are changing.

One of the relatively few Florida scientists capable of doing that type of work says there’s not nearly enough genetic analysis happening in the state when it comes to the virus. He said the state’s public-health officials are working hard but lack the funding to scale up their efforts, which is why he believes they should be collaborating more with academic researchers.

“We are terribly behind,” said Marco Salemi, a University of Florida professor and molecular biologist who has been studying the spread of infectious diseases for 30 years. “We are terribly behind in terms of what’s happening in the rest of the country, and we are terribly behind what’s happening in other countries, like the U.K.”

A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Health said the agency has studied nearly 3,000 samples of the virus and uploaded its findings publicly. The agency, he said, is working closely with the CDC to monitor for changes in the virus’ genetic makeup and better understand how it is spreading.

But Salemi said that while state health officials have been analyzing — or sequencing — the SARSCoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, in Florida, they haven’t shared the specifics about their findings with his laboratory. The state has uploaded its genetic sequences of the virus to the public domain, Salemi said, but there is a lack of “metadata” about details like whether the person the virus sample came from had symptoms or where they might have been infected.

“We have so very little data and so very little help from the state to actually coordinate the sequencing action that right now we are kind of flying blind,” he said.

Dr. Ashish Jha, dean at the Brown University School of Public Health, said Florida isn’t alone, and most states need more ambitious efforts to monitor how the virus is changing. That’s because the public needs to know immediately if research shows variants are more contagious or resistant to vaccines.

“You want to know that very, very early — both so you can put in place new policies, and so you can warn people and they can be more vigilant,” he said.

Jason Mahon, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Health, said the agency’s lab uploads sequences of the virus to global and national databases that are accessible to the public and academics and that “department staff track and catalog every variant no matter how minor from every Florida specimen sequenced.”

The state’s health department has been sequencing the virus for a

CDC program called SPHERES (Sequencing for Public Health Emergency Response, Epidemiology and Surveillance). That national program allows health officials to coordinate their efforts through that consortium, Mahon said.

On Thursday, the Florida DOH reported 17,192 COVID cases, the highest single-day tally ever recorded in the state. The state did not report new cases on Friday due to the New Year’s Day holiday.

Florida has now confirmed a total of 1,323,315 cases, the third-highest level in the country, after California and Texas.