Mumbai: As Covid-19 cases rise in the country, Insacog – the network of laboratories set up to monitor genomic variations of the coronavirus in India – will hold a meeting on Friday.
“By Friday, we will come to know about the expansion of the new sub-variant and the proportion of other existing sub variants,” said a member of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (Insacog) on the condition of anonymity. So far, 69 cases of JN.1 Covid variant cases have been reported in the country.
India reported 116 new cases of Covid-19, with three deaths in Karnataka, bringing total active cases to 4,170 and the total death toll to 533,337, as of Tuesday.
“The cases are expected to go up as testing has been ramped up too,” he said.
While cases of newly detected sub-variant are surging, XBB continues to be dominant in India. Insacog will also review the severity of the disease.
“Data from the hospitals will be shared to understand if the hospitalisation has gone up,” he further said.
So far, Insacog has not found anything “unusual”, a member of the network said. India has not seen any ‘clustering’. Experts, however, said JN.1 is a variant to watch out for.
Rajeev Jayadevan, co-chairman of the Indian Medical Association’s national Covid Task Force, said that JN.1 appears to be driving it elsewhere in the world and is rapidly spreading within the country as well.
