The World Health Organization has now classified the COVID-19 Pirola mutation JN.1 as a “variant of interest.” This comes not long after the rules have warned COVID could still upset people’s travel plans this holiday season. 

JN.1 is now a variant of interest “due to its rapidly increasing spread,” reported The Washington Post.  It made up about 3 percent of all coronavirus cases in early November, but 27.1 percent a month later globally, the WHO said. It anticipates JN.1’s emergence may cause an increase in cases, especially in countries experiencing winter.

Two COVID Variants Spreading: HV.1 Is “Highly Contagious” & JN.1 Is “Immune Evasive”

The WHO designation came after emergency room visits in the United States for COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus collectively reached their highest levels since February, The Washington Post reported last week, ahead of the holiday period.

Coronavirus is constantly evolving into forms that are more transmissible or more adept at infecting people who were vaccinated or previously infected. Those attributes help variants outcompete others in circulation and fuel wavesof infection. But the scenario scientists have dreaded has yet to materialize in the last two years: a highly contagious variant deadlier than the ones before it. –The Washington Post

JN.1 was first reported in August. It evolved from variant BA.2.86, a descendant of omicron, the variant of the coronavirus that wreaked havoc in early 2022. BA.2.86 did not spread widely, but it worried experts because it had dozens of mutations on its spike protein. JN.1 is very similar with an additional spike protein mutation.

“Pirola” Variant Continues To Spread Rapidly

Jesse Bloom, a computational biologist who monitors coronavirus variants at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, said it’s too early to say whether JN.1 would cause surges in infections and hospitalizations. “In the past, new variants often increased cases and hospitalizations,” Bloom wrote in an email. “But there is now much more population immunity due to prior infections and vaccinations, so it’s unclear whether or not JN.1 will have a similar impact.”