The Union Health Ministry confirmed on Saturday that 441 new COVID-19 infections have been reported in India, while the number of active cases has dropped to 3,238. The ministry's statistics, updated at 8 am, shows that no deaths were reported in a 24-hour period. The number of daily cases was in double digits till December 5. However, with the arrival of a new COVID-19 variety, JN.1, and the cold weather, the number of cases started to grow once more.
"The currently available data suggests that the JN.1 variant is neither leading to an exponential rise in the new cases nor a surge in the hospitalisation and mortality," an official source told news agency PTI.
After December 5, the highest single-day rise of 841 cases was reported on December 31, 2023, which was 0.2 per cent of the peak cases reported in May 2021. The vast majority of the 3,238 active cases—roughly 92%—are recovering under home isolation.
India has faced three waves of COVID-19 in the past with lots of highest incidence of daily cases and loss of life being reported during the Delta wave during April-June 2021. At its peak, 4,14,188 cases and 3,915 deaths were reported on May 7, 2021.
Over 4.5 crore people have been affected and over 5.3 lakh have been killed nationwide since the outbreak of the Pandemic which began in early 2020.
According to the health ministry's website, nearly 4.4 crore individuals have recovered from the disease, indicating that the country's recovery rate is 98.81 percent. The website also shows data on a total of 220.67 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered so far in the country.
The new JN.1 sub-variant is a descendent of the Omicron subvariant known as BA.2.86 or Pirola, with Kerala being the first state to record a case. The Omicron strain's JN.1 subvariant has quickly risen to prominence as the predominant variant in the state of Maharashtra. Based on recent genetic analyses of coronavirus samples collected in January, almost all cases in the state are caused by the JN.1 subvariant.
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