Assam Health minister urges people to remain vigilant amid COVID sub-variant JN.1 scare
Source: X
Guwahati, Dec 20: In the midst of the rising Covid-19 cases in various regions, Assam Health Minister Keshav Mahanta emphasised the importance of staying vigilant on Wednesday. He reassured that Assam has not reported any cases of the new variant and stated that the government is actively monitoring the situation. Mahanta has further urged the public to stay alert.
Earlier today, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya reviewed the COVID-19 situation and preparedness of the public health system for surveillance, containment and management in view of rising COVID-19 cases in some parts of the country.
Assam’s Health Minister, along with the rest of his counterparts from different states and union territories, joined the meeting to assess the present situation of COVID-19 in the country.
Highlighting the challenges posed by the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in some countries across the world such as China, Brazil, Germany and United States, Union Health Minister noted the importance of being prepared and remaining alert against new and emerging strains of COVID-19, especially in view of the upcoming festive season. Underlying and reiterating that COVID is not over yet, he requested states to monitor emerging evidence of COVID-19 cases, symptoms and case severity to plan an appropriate public health response.
He directed for strengthening the surveillance system for whole genome sequencing of positive case samples to track the variants through the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) network to ensure timely detection of newer variants, circulating in the country.
States and UTs have been requested to ramp up testing and refer a large number of samples of COVID-19 positive cases and pneumonia-like illness to INSACOG Genome Sequencing Laboratories (IGSLs) on a daily basis, for sequencing, to track new variants, if any.
It was informed that while active COVID cases in India are significantly less compared to the global scenario, in the last two weeks there has been a steep rise in active cases from 115 on 6th Dec 2023 to 614 on date. It was also noted that 92.8% of the cases are home isolated, indicating mild illness. No increase in hospitalization rates have been witnessed due to COVID-19, the cases that are hospitalized are due to other medical conditions – COVID-19 is an incidental finding. A rise in daily positivity rate has been observed in a few states like Kerala, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Karnataka.
On the new JN.1 variant of SARS-CoV-2, it was informed that the variant is currently under intense scientific scrutiny, but not a cause of immediate concern. No clustering of cases has been observed in India due to JN.1 and all the cases were found to be mild and all of them have recovered without any complications.