India reports 756 new Covid cases, five deaths

The Union Health Ministry on Sunday said the country reported 756 new Covid-19 cases and five deaths in the last 24 hours. The five new fatalities were reported from Maharashtra, Kerala and Jammu & Kashmir, according to the Ministry data. On Saturday, two deaths were reported from Tamil Nadu and Gujarat while on Friday, 12 deaths were reported -- five from Kerala, four from Karnataka, two from Maharashtra, and one from Uttar Pradesh.

Meanwhile, the total number of active cases further fell to 4,049 from Saturday's 4,187. As of now, the total number of coronavirus cases in India, since the initial outbreak in January 2020, has reached 4,50,18,134, while the overall death toll has risen to 5,33,392.

The new JN.1 sub-variant is a descendent of the Omicron subvariant known as BA.2.86 or Pirola, with Kerala being the first state to report a case. Kerala, Karnataka witnessed JN.1 variant cases, while Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Telangana, Odisha and Haryana were also affected, as per the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG). Data suggests that the JN.1 variant is not causing any significant rise in new cases or hospitalisations and deaths.

These states have collectively reported 619 cases of the sub-variant by Thursday, with Karnataka leading with 199 cases followed by Kerala with 148 cases.INSACOG's data revealed that 239 Covid cases in December 2023, and 24 in November 2023, were identified with the presence of the JN.1 variant. The overall recovery from Covid has reached over 4.4 crore individuals, reflecting a national recovery rate of 98.81 per cent. The country has administered a total of 2,20,67,79,081 doses of COVID-19 vaccines, as per the available data.