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Amidst the rising concern over the new variant of SARS-CoV2, JN.1, which has been now found in many states, union health and family welfare minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Thursday said that there is no doubt about the vaccinations’ effectiveness and that they will offer equal protection.
So far, there have been 21 confirmed cases of the JN.1 covid variant. With the 594 fresh cases reported in the country on Thursday, the total number of active covid-19 cases in India now stands at 2,669 on Thursday. One more fatality has been recorded in Kerala.
“Our vaccines will work against all variants and it will guard against mortality,” said the minister.
The minister also noted that covid-19 has now become a type of viral and that there will keep on happening mutations and cases will keep coming.
The experts are of opinion that unlike in western countries where the vaccines have been modified with changes in variant of covid-19, in India it has remained the same.
“The problem is vaccine makers in India have not modified it and the same doses have been supplied for so long. In other countries, the vaccine makers have been modifying doses as per the strain. And now that it has been quite a time that people took vaccines, there remains high chances that people get infected with covid, and this variant is highly transmissible owing to its protein spike. Omicron keeps mutating and is known for breaking through natural or vaccine immunity,” said Dr Lalit Kant, former scientist, ICMR.
With emergence of XBB sub-variants, the bivalent vaccines became less effective and the vaccine manufacturers developed ones for XBB sub-variant now.
The European Union (EU) has authorized two mRNA vaccines, Moderna’s mRNA-1273.815 and Pfizer’s XBB.1.5 BNT162b2 vaccines that encode the spike of the XBB.1.5 sub-variant. This is however, not present in India.
A meeting was also held on Wednesday between union health ministry and state health departments to discuss about the potential spike in the covid cases in the country amidst festive season where it was decided to increase testing, surveillance and send more samples for genome sequencing.
JN.1 is a variant, which has got one additional spike protein makes it more transmissible as compared to BA.2.86 which has been existing in the country for quite some time now. Identified as a descendent of the, Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, JN.1 is the result of a highly mutated strain from the BA.2.86 variant, nicknamed Pirola. The BA.2.86 lineage was first identified in August 2023 in India and carries more than 30 mutations in the spike protein. Both JN.1 and BA.2.86 have similar characteristics but for one feature, JN.1 has an extra spike protein.
In May, the WHO had declared covid-19 as no longer a global health emergency. About the variant JN.1, the WHO recently termed is as the matter of “variant of interest” given its rapidly increasing spread but said it poses a “low” global public threat.
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Published: 21 Dec 2023, 08:10 PM IST
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