Two deaths — one each from Tamil Nadu and Gujarat — were reported in a span of 24 hours, according to the ministry’s data updated at 8 am.
New Delhi:
India has recorded a single-day rise of 774 COVID-19 cases while the number of active cases stands at 4,187, the Union health ministry said on Saturday.
Two deaths — one each from Tamil Nadu and Gujarat — were reported in a span of 24 hours, according to the ministry’s data updated at 8 am.
The number of daily cases was in double digits till December 5 but it began to rise again amid cold weather conditions and after the emergence of a new COVID-19 variant, JN.1.
After December 5, the highest single-day rise of 841 cases was reported on December 31, 2023, which was 0.2 per cent of the peak cases reported in May 2021, official sources said.
Of the 4,187 active cases, the majority (over 92 per cent) are recovering under home isolation.
An official source said, “The currently available data suggests that the JN.1 variant is neither leading to an exponential rise in the new cases nor a surge in the hospitalisation and mortality.”
JN.1, the latest Covid-19 variant from the lineage of Omicron making a fresh surge around the globe, represents ‘very serious evolution’ of Covid virus, according to global experts.
JN.1, classified as a variant of interest (VOI) by the World Health Organization (WHO) due to its rapid spread, is currently present in about 41 countries.
It was first detected in Luxembourg in August. The WHO expects JN.1 to increase the burden of respiratory infections in many countries.
The WHO has “just called JN.1 a VOI (variant of interest), and that just doesn’t cut it, with the growth advantage this variant has demonstrated. It is just extraordinary”, Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California,US, was quoted as saying to Fortune.
JN.1 is a descendent lineage of BA.2.86, with the earliest sample collected on August 25, 2023. In comparison with BA.2.86, JN.1 has the additional L455S mutation in the spike protein, making it more transmissible.
“JN.1 represents ‘a very serious evolution of the virus’. And it isn’t over,” Dr. Michael Osterholm, Director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), was quoted as saying.
“JN.1 is an all new variant with numerous changes that had never been seen in any commonly circulating lineage before. This is unlike other recent variants, which were merely a few mutations from their predecessor,” Dr Rajeev Jayadevan, co-chairman of the National Indian Medical Association Covid Task Force, told IANS.
“Therefore, the disease patterns from an immune evasiveness and spread capability of this variant needs careful attention,” Dr Jayadevan added.
He explained immune invasiveness of a variant as the ability of the virus to overcome the existing immune response within an individual.
After the major variants of Covid like Alpha, Delta and Omicron, JN.1 very likely represents a new chapter in pandemic evolution, claimed the experts. According to Ryan Gregory, a biology professor at the University of Guelph in Canada, JN.1 has ushered in “a new era”.
The highly transmissible variant is “on track to become the lineage from which most variants are descended for the foreseeable future”, Gregory was quoted as saying to Fortune.
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead said that the next sub-lineages of the Covid virus can “come from JN.1”.
“But we could also see something quite different. We could see something like an Omicron again,” she said.
India has witnessed three waves of COVID-19 in the past with the peak incidence of daily cases and deaths being reported during the Delta wave during April-June 2021. At its peak, 4,14,188 cases and 3,915 deaths were reported on May 7, 2021.
Since the pandemic began in early 2020, more than 4.5 crore people have been infected and over 5.3 lakh have died across the country.
The number of people who have recuperated from the disease stands at over 4.4 crore with a national recovery rate of 98.81 per cent, according to the ministry’s website.
According to the website, 220.67 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered so far in the country.
Agencies