Covid numbers increase in Singapore, Hong Kong

A few years ago it would have been news that would have been greeted with some alarm, but now it barely registers when Singapore says that there has been an increase in Covid cases there. Its ministry of health recently issued a press release, stating that ‘The estimated number of COVID-19 cases in the week of 27 April to 3 May 2025 rose to 14,200 cases, compared to 11,100 cases in the previous week.’ Simultaneously, there were also reports that Hong Kong too is seeing an uptick in numbers.  Its health authority too released a statement that gave details about surveillance data for the week ending May 10. It said, ‘The viral load of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from sewage surveillance, the test positivity rate and the cases tested positive by nucleic acid tests in the laboratory have continued to rise over the past four weeks. In particular, the percentage of respiratory samples testing positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus gradually increased to 13.66 per cent from 6.21 per cent four weeks ago (the week of April 6 to 12), which is a record high in the past year.’

Possibly India could also be part of the same phenomenon but it is hidden given testing for the virus, public or private, is negligible. There is however still no cause to worry because the virus never really went away in the first place. It took the regular trajectory of pandemics by which with every successive wave, humans became more immune and the new variants that came up were less severe. Now, even if one is infected it is no more than a flu infection, with similar symptoms. The only way to know is to test which there is no reason to do because of the mildness of the disease. The present increase is said to be because of a variant called JN.1, which is an offshoot of Omicron but present no new danger. As a WHO report on the variant notes, ‘The available evidence on JN.1 does not suggest additional public health risks relative to the other currently circulating Omicron descendent lineages. Available limited evidence does not suggest that the associated disease severity is higher as compared to other circulating variants.’

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