New Covid Variant JN.1: A majority of the new cases were only mild infections.
Daily COVID-19 cases in India have been declining over the past few weeks - down from over 840 on December 31 to just 269 on Tuesday, and the number of active cases is now only 2,556, the government said Wednesday, adding that three deaths were reported in the previous 24 hours.
The number of new cases reported daily had fallen to below 100 till early December but this spiked in the following days and weeks, fuelled by the emergence of a new variant - JN.1 - and the onset of winter. The combination led to a surge in overall actives cases - from around 2,800 to over 4,500.
Fortunately, a majority of the new cases were only mild infections. In fact, sources said 90 per cent did not need a hospital visit and, among the 10 per cent who did, only 1.1 per cent were put in ICUs, only 0.5 per cent needed oxygen support, and only 0.3 per cent were on ventilators to help breathe.
All of this, Health Ministry sources told NDTV, stressed that though over 1,200 new JN.1 cases have been reported, across 17 states, it is not a matter of concern. One source said data suggests "JN.1 is neither leading to an exponential rise in new cases nor surge in hospitalisation and mortality".
It is important, however, to note that both in India and abroad COVID-19 remains a killer virus, capable of a deadly wave of infections as in 2021, when over four lakh cases and nearly 4,000 deaths were reported in a day.
The World Health Organization said last week that nearly 10,000 COVID-related deaths were reported in December. "COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency (but) the virus is still circulating, changing, and killing," agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
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The WHO has classified JN.1 as a separate 'variant of interest', given a rapidly increasing spread, but has also said it poses a 'low' global public health risk. JN.1 was previously classified as a 'variant of interest' as part of the BA.2.86 sub-lineages, the global medical body said.
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As of Sunday, more than 1,200 cases of the JN.1 variant have been confirmed, with Nagaland the 17th state to report an infection. Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Kerala have the highest numbers of such cases, with 215, 189, 170, and 154, respectively.
Bengal has 97, Goa 90, Tamil Nadu 88, and Gujarat 76, the government said. Telangana and Rajasthan have 32 each, Chhattisgarh 25, Delhi 16, Uttar Pradesh seven, Haryana five, Odisha three, and Uttarakhand one. The centre has asked all states and union territories to maintain a constant vigil, and ensure effective compliance of the guidelines for surveillance of COVID-19 cases.