As COVID-19 cases are on a rise, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has urged countries in South-East Asia to strengthen surveillance in view of the increasing cases of respiratory diseases and new Covid sub-variant JN.1, and influenza. They also urged people to take protective measures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
WHO South-East Asia regional director, Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh noted that the COVID-19 virus continues to evolve, change, and circulate in all countries globally. She added that while current evidence suggests the additional public health risk posed by JN.1 is low, authorities must continue to track the evolution of these viruses to tailor our response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She stated that the countries must strengthen surveillance and sequencing, and ensure sharing of data. The World Health Organisation has classified JN.1 as a variant of interest following its rapid global spread. In the past weeks, JN.1 was reported in multiple countries, and its prevalence has been rapidly increasing globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh explained that considering the limited available evidence, the additional public health risk posed by JN.1 is currently evaluated as low at the global level. It is expected that the variant may cause an increase in COVID-19 cases amid a surge of infections of other viral and bacterial infections, especially in countries entering the winter season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The South-East Asia regional director also emphasised on the importance of vaccination against COVID-19 and influenza, especially for people at high risk. She underlined that all the World Health Organisation-approved COVID-19 vaccines continue to protect against severe diseases and deaths from all variants including JN.1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh added that with COVID-19 continuing to circulate at high levels globally, countries must strengthen surveillance, sequencing, and reporting to effectively manage respiratory diseases and to protect people’s health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In May this year, following sustained decline in the trajectory of COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths, and high levels of population immunity to SARS-CoV2, WHO declared that COVID-19 no longer constituted a public health emergency of international concern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WHO South-East Asia regional director, Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh noted that the COVID-19 virus continues to evolve, change, and circulate in all countries globally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":496980,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1511,125714],"tags":[92143],"yst_prominent_words":[],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2023\/12\/24175409\/Capture-2023-12-24T175117.700.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496978"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496978"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=496978"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=496978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}