Dhaka, Jan 19 (IANS) The Bangladeshi country has shown the presence of a new subvariant of the JN. 1 coronavirus in the South Asian country.
“The JN.1 strain was found in five Covid-19 patients who don’t have any travel history,” Tahmina Shireen, Director of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), told journalists on Thursday.
He added that this is the first time the presence of the JN. 1 strain has been shown in Bangladesh, Xinhua news firm reported.
In this context, the Bangladesh Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) of the Ministry of Health issued a statement on Thursday ordering the government to resume the Covid-19 vaccination program for the first, second and booster doses (third and fourth).
Bangladesh plans to administer 250 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine over the next year, a senior official said on Tuesday.
Jahangir Alam, secretary of Bangladesh’s Health Services Division, told reporters that some of those vaccines will be administered as fourth doses this year and the rest will be administered in 2025.
According to the official, the new vaccination campaign will prioritize frontline workers and other people with physical vulnerabilities, following concerns about the emergence of the JN. 1 variant of Covid-19.
Last month, the World Health Organization classified the JN. 1 strain as a separate variant of interest, highlighting the strain’s spread around the world.
–IANS
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