Experts are surprised, but cautiously optimistic, as new coronavirus cases in Florida continue to fall despite the high prevalence of the UK’s ‘super COVID’ variant, suggesting the US could escape a new wave driven by viral mutations.
Florida now leads the nation in confirmed cases of variant B117, which now account for an estimated half of all new cases there, but has experienced a 75% decrease in total cases since early January.
Despite severe warnings from UK officials that variant B117 is up to 70 per cent more contagious than previous chains, and new research suggests it is twice as deadly, raising fears that an increase in the variant could be overcome. vaccine launches.
‘I think we keep seeing the data. If cases continue to decline in Florida despite circulating variants, the variant may not be as bad as expected, “Suzanne Judd, a doctoral epidemiologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s School of Public Health, told DailyMail.com.
“That’s why we need to avoid speculating with variants until we have the data,” he added.
“If cases continue to decline in Florida despite circulating variants, the variant may not be as bad as expected,” doctoral epidemiologist Suzanne Judd (not pictured) told DailyMail.com. Further up, spring Fridays go down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Thursday
Florida leads the nation in confirmed cases of variants, and variant B117 accounts for about half of all new cases
Still, new cases in Florida have continued to fall, falling 75% since early January, despite warnings of the final judgment on the Super Bowl and relaxed business restrictions.
“The good news from Florida is an encouraging sign for the rest of us. It doesn’t mean America is out of the woods. But it does suggest we could get out sooner than we thought,” Andrew Romano wrote for Yahoo News.
Florida leads the country with 690 confirmed cases of variant B117, but surveillance tests estimate that the actual number of variant cases is much higher.
Earlier this week, researchers dear that B117 had reached more than half of new cases in Florida, after accounting for only 4 percent of cases a month ago.
But in the meantime, Florida’s countdown of cases has dropped, despite predictions from the final trial of the state’s lax restrictions on businesses and the big Super Bowl LV meetings in Tampa in early February.
Florida’s latest COVID increase peaked on Jan. 8 – 84 cases per 100,000 population daily, but cases have fallen steadily and stood at 22 per 100,000 on Thursday.
Hospitalizations have also halved over the same period, as has the positivity rate of the Florida test, which now stands at 4.88 percent. Deaths have also dropped sharply.
The percentage of Florida surveillance tests with “failure of the S gene target,” the vast majority of which are cases of B117, is seen to exceed 50% this week
Deaths have dropped dramatically in Florida as hospitalizations and cases have also declined
Meanwhile, 18.5 percent of Floridians have received at least one dose of COVID vaccine and 10 percent are fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.
Judd, the epidemiologist, noted that Israeli data showed that even partial vaccination appears to limit the spread of B117, suggesting that the vaccine was released just in time.
“Although the variant spread rapidly in the UK, there was little data on how it would spread to the population with any level of vaccination,” he said.
Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and researcher, defined the trend in Florida as “more uncomfortable as to whether strain B.1.1.7 will reach the United States.”
“And there are no signs of any increase in cases. All right so far,” he tweeted this week.
Meanwhile, a worrying new researcher has emerged who suggests that variant B117, also known in the UK as the “Kent variant”, is more lethal and more contagious.
College students have come down to Florida to spend the spring break with the beaches of Fort Lauderdale full of masks without masks. Florida is the US capital B117, but has declining cases
A new study found that the most infectious variant, which spread across the UK late last year before spreading around the world, is between 30 and 100 per cent more deadly.
Epidemiologists at the universities of Exeter and Bristol said the data suggest that the variant is associated with a significantly higher mortality rate among adults compared to previously circulating strains.
Robert Challen, of the University of Exeter, lead author of the study, said: “In the community, death from Covid-19 is still a rare occurrence, but variant B117 increases the risk.
“Along with its ability to spread rapidly, this makes the B117 a threat that should be taken seriously.”
The researchers examined mortality rates between people infected with the new variant and those infected with other strains.
They found that the variant first detected in Kent caused 227 deaths in a sample of 54,906 patients, compared with 141 among the same number of patients who had the previous strains.
Mutations in the virus have raised concerns about whether vaccines would be effective against new strains, including strain B117.
But research suggests that Pfizer’s stroke is as effective against the coronavirus variant as it is against the original pandemic strain, and other studies indicate that the Modern vaccine is also very effective against the variant.