Delhi Health Minister Saurabh Bhardwaj affirmed on Thursday that Delhi presently has no active cases of the JN.1 subvariant of COVID-19, following the discharge of the lone patient infected with the variant. Minister Bhardwaj reassured the public, stating that the new variant is mild, and individuals infected with it are not experiencing severe illness.
Highlighting the increased testing efforts, Minister Bhardwaj provided details, saying, “We have increased the number of tests. Yesterday, we performed 636 tests in private and government hospitals combined. Three genome sequencing results were received yesterday, out of which two were old Omicron variants and one was JN.1.”
Regarding the patient with the JN.1 variant, he mentioned, “The patient has already been discharged from the hospital and is healthy now.” He concluded, “We can say that there are no patients of JN.1 variant in Delhi currently.”
In the broader context of COVID-19 in India, the Union Health Ministry reported 692 new cases in the last 24 hours, with the total active caseload at 4,097. Six deaths were recorded during this period, with two in Maharashtra, and one each in Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, and West Bengal. The overall COVID-19 cases in India since January 2020 now stand at 4,50,10,944, and the total death toll has risen to 5,33,346.
Addressing the surge in cases, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi has issued guidelines for COVID-19 suspected or positive cases reported at hospitals. Meanwhile, the JN.1 sub-variant, a descendant of the Omicron subvariant BA.2.86 or Pirola, has seen 109 cases in India, with the first case reported in Kerala. The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified JN.1 as a variant of interest, emphasizing a low overall risk based on current evidence, distinct from its parent lineage BA.2.86.