FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Florida remains the state with the most confirmed cases of COVID-19 variants, and that number has now surpassed 1,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC’s latest numbers, timestamped Sunday, show 1,040 verified cases of the U.K. variant in Florida, plus 21 cases of the Brazilian variant and nine cases of the variant initially identified in South Africa.
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Florida passed 2 million cases of COVID-19 in total Saturday.
Michigan has the second-most variant cases in the United States with just over 617. California and Texas are the only other states with over 400.
Florida’s health department previously said that it is doing more sequencing of COVID-19 samples to detect variants than many states, but infectious disease experts say the number of variants out there is actually much higher than the total numbers verified in labs.
Local 10 News has requested a current breakdown of variant cases by county from the Florida Department of Health. When that data has been revealed previously it has shown the highest concentration of variant cases in South Florida.
The Orlando Sentinel sued the health department last week for that information, and it showed as of March 17 that Broward had the most confirmed variant cases (307), followed by Miami-Dade (129) and Palm Beach County (75).
Monroe County didn’t have any verified variants at that time.
To see the CDC’s latest variant data, click here.