Rising Covid cases: Health Ministry asks states to maintain 'constant vigil'

The Union Health Ministry on Monday issued an advisory to states over the fresh surge in Covid19 cases in some statesUTs in India and the detection of the first case of the new JN1 a subvariant of Omicron in KeralaIn the letter Union Health Secretary Sudhansh Pant highlighted the need for maintaining a state of constant vigil over the Covid situation in the countryUnderlining that due to consistent and collaborative actions between Centre and State Governments we have been able to sustain the trajectory at sustainable low rates he said However as the Covid19 virus continues to circulate and its epidemiology behaviour gets settled with Indian weather conditions and circulation of other usual pathogens it is important to keep the momentum going to effectively deal with the challenges in public healthThe letter comes as India on Monday recorded 1828 Covid cases With 1634 cases Kerala accounted for the highest numberLooking at the upcoming festive season the Union Health Secretary advised the states to put in place requisite public health measures and other arrangements to minimise risk of increase in transmission of the disease by adherence to maintenance of respiratory hygieneAll states have been advised to ensure adequate testing in all the districts as per Covid testing guidelines and maintain the recommended share of RTPCR and Antigen tests They have also been asked to monitor and report districtwise Influenzalike Illness ILI amp Severe Acute Respiratory Illness SARI cases in all health facilities on a regular basis including in the Integrated Health Information Platform IHIP portal for detecting the early rising trend of casesThe ministry also encouraged to increase number of RTPCR tests and send positive samples for genome sequencing to Indian SARS COV2 Genomics Consortium INSACOG laboratories so as to enable timely detection of new variantsJN1 is a sublineage of the BA286 Omicron variant and was first detected in Luxembourg in August before spreading to other countries BA286 also known as the Pirola variant was first detected in Denmark in July According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC JN1 is part of the same lineage of BA286 and contains an extra spike mutation L455S mutation which has immuneevasion propertiesThe World Health Organisation WHO has also asked for strong surveillance and sequence sharing as cases are rising globally About 68 per cent of the current Covid cases are cases of XBB sublineages and other groupings like JN1 Maria Van Kerkhove Covid19 technical lead at WHO said in a video message posted on XThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever