Caretaker Health Minister Dr Nadeem Jan said on Friday that Pakistan country had not yet recorded any cases of the new Covid-19 variant, JN.1 Omicron.
The minister made the statement during a senate session.
His statement comes a day after the caretaker government decided to procure 500,000 doses of a Covid vaccine, amid a possible resurgence of the new variant of the virus in various countries.
The procurement of Pfizer vaccines from the US was planned on the recommendations of the Emergency Operation Centre’s (EOC) technical advisory group following the emerging threat of the JN.1 variant.
Speaking in the upper house today, the health minister said that Pakistan was closely monitoring the new variant and the government was on “red alert”.
Earlier, the caretaker government has decided to enhance testing of COVID-19 following an advisory issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO) regarding the new variant – “JN.1 Omicron”.
The National Command and Operations Center (NCOC) has issued advisory to provincial health departments, pointing out the WHO alert about increase in respiratory infection.
In the advisory, the NCOC pointed out that neighbouring countries were reporting cases of the newly-spread JN-1 variant of COVID-19.
“It has also been observed with serious concerns that number of cases of Influenza-Like Illness (ILI) are rising in the country for the past few weeks,” it added.
