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.
Amid a steady rise in Covid-19 cases in India, global experts have warned that its latest variant JN.1 from the lineage of Omicron represents a ‘very serious evolution’ of Covid-19 virus.
After the major variants of COVID-19 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 warned.
