The caretaker government has decided to enhance testing of COVID-19 following an advisory issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO) regarding the new variant – “JN.1 Omicron”, VOS News reported on Wednesday.
The National Command and Operations Center (NCOC) has issued advisory to provincial health departments, pointing out the WHO alert about increase in respiratory infection.
In the advisory, the NCOC pointed out that neighbouring countries were reporting cases of the newly-spread JN-1 variant of COVID-19.
“It has also been observed with serious concerns that number of cases of Influenza-Like Illness (ILI) are rising in the country for the past few weeks,” it added.
Keeping in the above-mentioned situation, the NCOC urged all provinces/regions to enhance COVID-19 testing to monitor the real time situation in the country.
On Dec 19, the WHO declared JN.1 “a variant of interest” due to its “rapidly increasing spread”.
A day earlier, Federal Health Minister Dr Nadeem Jan said a new variant of Covid-19 “JN.1 Omicron” has been reported in some countries and Pakistan was keeping an eye on developments.
“It is a sub-variant of the Omicron but has not been reported in Pakistan yet. I believe there will be fewer chances that the virus would travel to Pakistan as we are vigilant but there is need to be more careful,” he claimed.
“We have increased screening at international border and testing of the people. Moreover, provincial and district governments have been also directed to increase testing.”
Meanwhile, the National Institute of Health issued a report claiming that 3,609 tests of Covid-19 were held during last week of which 16 samples were found positive, with no mortality. While the positivity rate was 0.44pc, there were no critical patients of Covid-19.
