COVID JN.1 variant: Himachal health dept issues advisory to district units

Hamirpur: Following the detection of COVID-19 variant JN.1 in the country, Himachal Pradesh's health department has issued an advisory to the chief medical officers in the state to test patients with COVID-like symptoms and take necessary precautions, officials said.

People with symptoms of cold, fever or cough are advised to take a COVID test, Una CMO Dr Sanjeev Kumar said on Tuesday. He also urged people to wear masks.

India has recorded 69 cases of COVID JN.1 variant, as per official sources.

Medical Dialogues team had earlier reported that after a surge in the cases of the new COVID subvariant JN.1, doctors from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) have advised people to not panic but rather remain alert and vigilant. "People are getting infected by the new sub-variant of COVID-JN.1 in many states of the country. The symptoms of the patients are mild. Therefore, there is no need to panic but the need to remain alert," Doctor Neeraj Nischal said.

Doctor Nischal, who is an Additional Professor in the Department of Medicine at AIIMS Delhi, said, "We have been saying this type of ripple will keep on happening. Even during the first and second waves, we predicted that this virus would mutate further and the stage would come where it would become more infectious but at the same time cause less mortality or morbidity." "So this is, you can say, a fight between the viruses in human beings who are also trying to survive. People are becoming infected but at the same time, it's not causing the problem that its predecessors, like the delta variant, caused," said the doctor.