At least 52 cases of a coronavirus variant first identified in the United Kingdom have been identified in the United States, according to the CDC on Wednesday.
This includes 26 cases in California, 22 cases in Florida, two cases in Colorado and one case in Georgia and New York.
The CDC says this is not the total number of cases circulating in the United States, but rather those found by analyzing positive samples. The agency warns that its numbers, which are expected to be updated on Tuesday and Thursday, may not immediately match those of state and local health departments.
While the variant appears to spread more easily than Covid-19, there is no evidence that it is more deadly or causes more severe disease, according to the CDC.
Experts suspect that there may be many more cases in the US and have criticized the country for not doing more genetic sequencing of virus samples to monitor mutations. On Sunday, a CDC official told CNN that the agency intends to double the number of samples it sequences in the next two weeks – with a target of 6,500 per week.
The oldest known sample in the US that carried the current version of the variant was taken on December 19 in Florida, according to the GISAID genomic database. However, collection data are not available for all samples.