What you need to know about a new coronavirus variant in Florida

The Washington Post quoted John Sellick in a story reporting that a coronavirus variant discovered in Colombia is showing up among patients in South Florida, increasing infections and putting health officials on alert. In the United States, the variant has yet to be named a variant of interest or concern, accounting for just more than 2.1 percent of cases as of July 17, Sellick noted. “The only time it becomes important is if it gives virus selective advantage, which we’ve seen with delta variant,” he said. “We’ll see with this one. … 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?” Sellick noted how quickly the delta variant went from accounting for just more than 10 percent of cases at the beginning of June to more than 80 percent of cases by mid-July.