The first confirmed case of a coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa has been detected in Tennessee, state health officials announced Friday (March 5). Additionally, 20 cases of the variant first found in the United Kingdom have also been detected in the state.
According to FOX 17, the Tennessee Department of Health has not announced which counties have detected the variants and are instead "only confirming the number of cases statewide." An additional 1,514 new cases of COVID-19 were reported statewide on Thursday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the past year to 779,449.
The U.K. variant of the virus, also known as B.1.1.7, was first identified in late 2020. The first U.S. case of the South African variant, another mutated version of the virus known as B.1.351, was confirmed in January and is believed to be more contagious than other strains. Even though the variants are mutations of the original novel coronavirus, experts believe that the currently-approved vaccines will be effective.
The news of new variants of the virus come on the one year anniversary of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Tennessee, WSMV reports. Since the first case in Williamson County, nearly 800,000 cases have been reported across the state and more than 11,000 lives have been lost.
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