Amid rising Covid-19 cases, govt not planning mask mandate or vaccine shots

The central government has no plans to issue guidelines on travel restrictions, mask mandates, or booster shots, despite a steady rise in the number of Covid-19 cases in the country.

“The government will not issue any guidelines on mask mandates or booster shots. It is closely monitoring the situation," a senior official in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare was quoted as saying by The Economic Times (ET).

According to the report, the health experts said that Covid-19 cases will increase in winter but there is no need to get another vaccine shot as the potential to cause severe illness from the latest Omicron sub-variant JN.1 is far less than the previous variants.

Gautam Menon, professor of physics and biology at Ashoka University, said, “Our best information is that the current coronavirus vaccines, even those based on the ancestral strain such as those administered in India, should continue to work on JN.1. The disease severity associated with the sub-variant JN.1 is expected to be comparable to the other circulating variants, not worse.”

Anurag Agrawal, a former head of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (Insacog), said, "For a very vulnerable person, the Omicron variant's updated vaccine as a booster may have value. But it is not worth it for the general population."

A member of the Insacog said that no clustering or severity in the illness has so far been found and thus, there is no renewed risk of Covid-19 causing serious illnesses.

On Thursday, India reported 358 new cases of Covid-19, of which 300 cases were from Kerala. The positivity rate in Kerala is above 31 per cent. On December 20, six deaths were reported, and so far, as many as 23 people have died in the last 20 days.

An Insacog member said that the Omicron sub-variant JN.1 has not been detected in sewage surveillance, which shows that there is no widespread infection.
The SARS-CoV-2 sub-variant JN.1 has been classified as a separate variant of interest (VOI) from its parent lineage BA.2.86, due to its rapidly increasing spread, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).