As winter gets underway in the Northern Hemisphere, the World Health Organization has identified a new COVID “variant of interest” during the holiday season.
According to the WHO, JN.1 has been split off from its parent strain BA.2.86 and has been designated as a “variant of concern” this week.
Both variants of COVID are descendants of BA.2, which caused upticks in cases earlier in the pandemic.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, JN.1 is the second-most prevalent COVID variant in circulation in the United States, responsible for an estimated 21.4% of cases as of Dec. 9.
Feeling out of the loop? We'll catch you up on the Chicago news you need to know. Sign up for the weekly Chicago Catch-Up newsletter here.
While WHO does warn that the emergence of JN.1 could tax health care systems in North America, they do say that the public health risk of the variant is “low,” and that it appears current vaccine formulations are still able to protect against severe disease and death.
Still, the variant does share similarities to previous strains in that it more easily avoids existing immunity, whether from previous infection or vaccine.
As for symptoms, it appears that JN.1 causes similar issues as previous strains of the virus. Those include fever or chills, cough, shortness of breath, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, sore throat, congestion, nausea and diarrhea, according to the CDC.
JN.1 is still catching up to other variants of COVID in the Midwest, but it isn’t having a massive impact on hospital admissions in the Chicago area.
In the most recent updates from the CDC, most of the Chicago area is still at a low admissions rate for COVID, with the exception of Kankakee County. A total of 39 new hospital admissions have been reported in the last week in Kankakee and Iroquois counties, a 95% increase. a
Northwest Indiana is mostly at a “medium” hospitalization rate, with 15.4 new admissions per 100,000 residents in Lake County and Porter County.
Both counties did see reductions in hospital admissions week-over-week, dropping by 14.3%.
