The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found more than 50 cases of the new COVID-19 variant that was originally discovered in the United Kingdom, and that number may soon rise.
What’s going on?
The CDC released a new tracker that identifies case of the new COVID-19 variant that has been working its way through the United Kingdom and Europe.
Here’s a breakdown of the case numbers so far.
- California — 26.
- Colorado — 2.
- Florida — 22.
- Georgia — 1.
- New York — 1.
The CDC said this number doesn’t reflect the total number of cases in the United States, which would be hard to determine because of community spread. However, the numbers represent how many people were discovered to have the variant based on sequencing.
Bigger picture
Experts worry the new COVID-19 variant might be more transmissible than the previous version of the virus. However, there is no evidence that the new variant is deadlier, according to CNN.
- The CDC told CNN it plans to double the number of samples over the next two weeks to get a sense of how far the new virus variant is spreading.
- Experts suggested this week that California’s recent COVID-19 surge has been a result of the variant making its way from Europe to the United Kingdom, as I wrote about for the Deseret News.