Beijing: 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.
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