Florida health authorities reported on Thursday finding evidence of the most recent case in the United States of the new and apparently more contagious variant of the coronavirus first seen in England, saying it was detected in a man who has not traveled lately.
The case, disclosed in a statement from the Florida Department of Health tweeted on its HealthyFla website, was caught after reports in recent days of two individual cases of the Great Britain variant of COVID-19 discovered in Colorado and California. .
In the statement, Florida authorities said the new variant of the virus was detected in a man in his twenties in Martin County, which borders the Atlantic coast north of the densely populated south of the peninsula. The health department did not provide further details, such as the man’s health status or how the variant was detected.
California announced the nation’s second confirmed case of the new variant of the coronavirus on Wednesday, 24 hours after the first infection with the variant was known in the United States, in Colorado. It was a member of the National Guard of that state who had been sent to help a nursing home with problems due to an outbreak.
Scientists in Britain believe that the variant is more contagious than previously identified strains. The cases have raised questions about how the version that is circulating in England reached the United States, and whether it is too late to stop it. Some experts say it is probably already spreading across the country.
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