The cases of covid are rising again, and once again it's in China

Now China has detected seven infections of the Covid subvariant JN.1, news agency Reuters has reported, citing the country's national disease control and prevention administration on Friday.

The authorities said the prevalence level of JN.1 is currently "very low" in the country, but added that it cannot rule out the possibility of it becoming the dominant strain in China due to factors including imported cases.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), JN.1, a variant of the virus that causes COVID-19, is a closely related offshoot of the variant BA.2.86.

As per the CDC, there is only a single change between JN.1 and BA.2.86 in the spike protein.

JN.1 was first detected in the United States in September 2023.

As of December 8, the public health agency of the United States projects that the variant JN.1 makes up between 15–29% of the total cases in the United States.

“(The) CDC projects that JN.1 will continue to increase as a proportion of SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences. It is currently the fastest-growing variant in the United States,” the public health agency of the US said.

As per the CDC, It is not currently known whether the JN.1 variant of coronavirus produces different symptoms from other variants. In general, the symptoms of COVID-19 tend to be similar across variants.

While the severity of JN.1 is yet to be figured, the US CDC has said that thecontinued growth of JN.1 suggests that it is either more transmissible or better at evading our immune systems.

“At this time, there is no evidence that JN.1 presents an increased risk to public health relative to other currently circulating variants,” it said. “There is no indication of increased severity from JN.1 at this time. Updated COVID-19 vaccines are expected to increase protection against JN.1, as they do for other variants.”