Florida won’t announce new COVID-19 cases on New Year’s Day

TALLAHASSE, Fla. (AP) — Florida health officials said Friday they will not report new cases of coronavirus in observance of the New Year’s Day holiday.

The daily report of new cases of COVID-19 will continue on Saturday, the agency said in a tweet on Friday afternoon.

This comes a day after the Florida Department of Health disclosed in statement tweeted on its HealthyFla site that evidence of a new and apparently more contagious coronavirus strain first seen in England has been detected in a Martin County man with no recent travel history.

Other cases of the new strain have been reported in Colorado and California.

Martin County is north of Palm Beach County, which along with Miami-Dade and Broward counties have been the state’s hardest hit region in dealing with coronavirus cases.

The Florida health statement said the agency is working with the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on investigating the case. Officials gave no other details about the case.

Also on Thursday, the state reported the highest daily jump in COVID-19 cases ever detected in Florida. Health officials reported 17,192 new cases and 133 new deaths, raising the death toll to 21,857.

On Friday afternoon, health officials reported that about 6,450 people were being treated for COVID-19 in hospitals around the state. During the virus surge last summer, the number of hospitalizations reached nearly 10,000. The numbers had fallen to about 2,000 in October and early November.

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