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The World Health Organization encourages people to keep up with their COVID-19 vaccines.
It says they are seeing an increase in COVID and other respiratory infections such as influenza, RSV and childhood pneumonia.
In Canada, Health Canada notes the level of COVID activity is highest in the eastern parts of the country.
The WHO’s Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove says keeping up with your vaccinations is the best defence against the virus.
“Protect yourself from infection using a number of different tools, but also make sure that if you get infected that you seek clinical care and you get vaccinated when it’s your turn to prevent severe disease and death. “All approved COVID-19 vaccines continue to provide protection against severe disease and death, and this includes against all of the circulating variants including JN.1,” says Dr. Van Kerkhove.
Many of the new cases have been connected to JN.1.
The WHO is classifying it as a separate variant of interest.
Its health risk is listed as low, but because of its rapid spread, the WHO says it could increase the burden of respiratory infections in many countries.
“This virus SARS K2 is evolving, it’s changing, and it’s circulating in all countries. We know this through reports from countries either from traditional based surveillance systems, but also through wastewater systems in some countries,” says Dr. Van Kerkhove.
The WHO is asking member countries to continue their surveillance and monitoring and to share the findings with the WHO so it can provide the best advice as possible.