The first case of the new, highly contagious COVID-19 variant has been confirmed in Florida, in the last hours of 2020.
The Florida Department of Health announced the case on Twitter about 8:30 p.m. Thursday. The person infected with the variant is a man in his 20s in Martin County with no history of travel, the health department said.
The health department did not give further details, such as releasing the man’s medical condition or how the strain was detected.
Two cases of the variant were confirmed in Colorado and California in the past few days.
The confirmed case in Colorado is a Colorado National Guard member, a man in his 20s who hadn’t been traveling, but was sent to work in a nursing home struggling with an outbreak of the virus in a small town outside Denver on Dec. 23.
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In Southern California, the nation’s second confirmed case was in a 30-year-old man in San Diego County with no travel history outside the county, according to San Diego County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher.
The cases have triggered a host of questions about how the variant arrived in the U.S. and added urgency to the nation’s vaccination drive.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said in a TV interview on Thursday that he expected the new variant to spread widely in the United States.
“We predicted it would be, when you have so much of it in the UK, which then spread to other countries in Europe and Canada, it was inevitable that it would be here,” Fauci said on NBC News’ “Today.”
Florida set a new record Thursday for COVID-19 cases reported on a single day, ending the year with the highest one-day tally ever with 17,192.
Florida’s health department added that experts don’t anticipate the COVID-19 vaccine to have much of an impact on mitigating the new variant, which emerged out of the United Kingdom.
The health department is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the investigation and encouraged all to continue practicing mitigation measures.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Brooke Baitinger can be reached at: [email protected], 954-422-0857 or Twitter: @bybbaitinger