{"id":5559,"date":"2023-12-19T19:02:17","date_gmt":"2023-12-20T01:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=5559"},"modified":"2023-12-19T19:02:20","modified_gmt":"2023-12-20T01:02:20","slug":"who-declares-new-jn-1-covid-strain-a-variant-of-interest-heres-what-that-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/12\/19\/who-declares-new-jn-1-covid-strain-a-variant-of-interest-heres-what-that-means\/","title":{"rendered":"WHO declares new JN.1 COVID strain a “variant of interest.” Here’s what that means."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

CBS News<\/a> The World Health Organization announced Tuesday it would step up its classification of the new\u00a0COVID-19<\/a>\u00a0variant JN.1 to a standalone “variant of interest,” after tracking\u00a0the strain’s rapid ascent<\/a>\u00a0around the world. Health officials have been careful to say that JN.1 has so far not been found to lead to different or more severe symptoms compared to previous variants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the WHO said JN.1’s “rapidly increasing spread” in multiple parts of the world was enough to warrant ungrouping the strain from its slower-moving ancestor BA.2.86.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“JN.1 continues to be reported in multiple countries, and its prevalence has been rapidly increasing globally and now represents the vast majority of BA.2.86 descendent lineages reported,” the WHO wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is a variant of interest?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

JN.1 is a closely related descendant of BA.2.86, a highly mutated strain that first worried scientists over the summer.\u00a0BA.2.86<\/a>\u00a0was deemed\u00a0a “variant of interest”<\/a>\u00a0by the WHO back\u00a0in August<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Variant of interest” is a category below the more worrisome “variant of concern” that would earn a strain a new Greek letter nickname from the U.N. agency, like Delta or Omicron. So far the WHO has declined to escalate any new variants to the “concern” threshold, signaling it poses a significantly increased risk to public health, since the\u00a0classification<\/a>\u00a0of the original Omicron variants in 2021.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CBS News The World Health Organization announced Tuesday it would step up its classification of the new\u00a0COVID-19\u00a0variant JN.1 to a standalone “variant of interest,” after tracking\u00a0the strain’s rapid ascent\u00a0around the world. Health officials have been careful to say that JN.1 has so far not been found to lead to different or more severe symptoms compared […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5560,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5559\/revisions\/5560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}