Another COVID Variant Detected In Florida: What’s Known About The Colombian Strain

Another variant of COVID-19 has reached the U.S. from Colombia and is spreading throughout Florida, according to health officials.

The B.1.6121 variant was first detected in Colombia in January, according to the World Health Organization. It currently has been identified by the agency as a variant that needs “further monitoring.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not classified the Colombian variant yet but has said that it has been detected in about 2.7% of test samples.

The B.1.6121 variant has become the dominant strain in some parts of Colombia, which emerged from the parental B.1 lineage, Fox News reported.

According to WPLG, an ABC affiliate out of Pembroke Park, Florida, the Colombian variant is comprised of about 10% of COVID cases that were sequenced at the University of Miami’s pathology lab in Florida last week.

The highly contagious Delta variant made up about 49% of cases, and the Brazilian strain was responsible for 26% of cases, the news outlet said.

Jackson Memorial Health CEO Carlos Migoya told WPLG, “In the last week, 10% of our patients had the Colombian variant. Why? Because of the travel between Colombia and Miami.”

As many as 16 cases of the Colombian variant through international travel were reported in the U.K. Public Health England has said there is no indication that the strain causes more severe disease or impacts vaccine efficacy.

The agency is continuing to investigate the variant and conduct lab testing to better understand its impact on the virus.

It is unclear how transmissible the Colombian variant is and if it should be deemed a variant of concern at this point.

John Sellick, a professor at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, told the Washington Post that based on the low case numbers, it is hard to tell right now.

“We’ll see with this one,” he said. “What we have to see is two weeks from now, or four weeks from now, is this going to do another trick and wind up being more?

He continued, “If this thing is really more transmissible and goes from 2% [of infections] to 30% or to 60%; we don’t want to see that. It has to be more fit than the Delta variant. It would have to be more transmissible.”