Florida finds several variants of COVID-19 cases in the United Kingdom, Brazil and South America

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The CDC’s updated number of cases of COVID-19 variants shows that Florida checked new cases of three separate strains this week.

This includes two more cases of the British variant detected on Sunday, two more cases of the Brazilian variant and an additional case of the variant initially identified in South Africa.

The latest totals show 1,042 cases in the UK (B.1.1.7) confirmed in Florida, 23 Brazilian (P.1) and 10 South African (B.1.351) variants.

Infectious disease experts say that the totals represent a relatively small percentage of the actual number of case variants, because not all COVID-19 samples are sequenced to detect variants.

Florida remains the state with the most confirmed cases. Michigan is the only other state with over 900.

California, Texas and Massachusetts each have over 400 and all other states are below it.

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Local 10 News sent several requests to the Florida Department of Health for an updated breakdown of the counties in which the case variants were located.

Each time these numbers were previously released, they showed that South Florida has by far the highest concentration of cases.

Experts fear that spring break visitors gathering in South Florida could add to the spread and then carry these variants to other communities.

Orlando Sentinel sued the county health department last week and found that as of March 17, Broward had the most confirmed cases (307), followed by Miami-Dade (129) and Palm Beach County. 75).

Monroe County had no verified version at the time.

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These numbers were before the CDC confirmed that Florida exceeded 1,000 total cases over the weekend, while the state exceeded 2 million total COVID-19 cases.

To see the latest CDC data, click here.