MIAMI – Although Teresa Frade became infected with Covid-19 in the summer and has already taken both doses of the vaccine, she is still apprehensive about visiting her family in Brazil.
The last time she was there was at the end of February last year, and she came back just before Florida went into blockade.
Frade, 54, a health worker in South Florida is unsure whether he will be able to be infected again with the Brazilian variant that devastated parts of the South American country and worries whether it could spread around here.
Florida leads the country with the highest number of cases caused by the United Kingdom’s most communicable and possibly deadliest variant, Covid-19, but new concerns are emerging about the potential spread of the Brazilian variant, which is also more contagious.
Florida has the largest Brazilian population in the United States, with about 80,000 born in Brazil, many of whom travel to their homeland to visit their family. President Joe Biden has reinstated travel restrictions to several countries, including Brazil; the restrictions affect non-American citizens.
“It is not a good time to travel,” said Frade, who has a family in Rio de Janeiro. In addition to travel restrictions, fear of the Brazilian lineage “makes us not feel like going”.
In the United States, the first known case of the Brazilian variant called P.1 was identified in a Minnesota resident who had recently traveled to Brazil, the state health department announced on Monday.
Scientists are concerned about this variant because of the increase in infections that has plagued the city of Manaus, Brazil. Science magazine published a study indicating that 76 percent of Manaus’ population had antibodies in October. But the area has seen a second increase in cases since mid-December. The fear is that the set of mutations in P.1 will not only make it more transmissible, but may also affect its ability to recognize antibodies, which can lead to reinfection.
Overall, the South American country had one of the fastest growing Covid-19 epidemics in the world, with the Amazon, where Manaus is located, the most affected. Manaus has a population of 2 million people.
The second outbreak was so devastating in Manaus, with its health system on the verge of collapse, that the city turned to Venezuela in crisis for help while hospitals were running out of oxygen. Venezuela sent five oxygen trucks last week.
The first known cases of the Brazilian variant were identified in four travelers from Brazil who were sampled during routine screening at an airport outside Tokyo. Experts predicted that it was only a matter of time before the Brazilian and British variants appeared in the United States.
“The import of P.1 to the USA is not surprising. The volumes of air passengers from Brazil to the United States are large and the variant is increasingly common in at least some parts of Brazil, ”said Dr. William Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health TH Chan.
‘Actively looking for the variant’
In Florida, the number of cases caused by the UK variant doubled last week and is now 92, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Florida Department of Health recently increased the number of samples from Covid-19 that it is examining for mutations, with an average of about 200 samples per week.
A Florida Department of Health spokesman said in an email that the state is “a national leader in mutating” the Covid-19 virus. As of January 19, the department had sequenced 3,470 specimens from Covid-19.
The spokesman said that “the Department is actively looking for the variant in Florida, which is why more cases are being discovered in Florida.”
Overall, the US lagged behind in sequencing compared to other countries. It is a lengthy process that takes days to complete, using samples from Covid-19 diagnostic tests that are normally discarded. In the US, only about 0.3 percent of all cases have been sequenced, according to the non-profit initiative GISAID which has a database
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis lifted all restrictions on business across the state in September and schools were forced to open. The state reported 8,408 cases on Wednesday. Nearly 1.5 million people received the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine in Florida.
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