Amid concerns that a new COVID-19 variant may have reached Lebanon during the country’s crucial Christmas tourism season, the Health Ministry assured Thursday that the new JN.1 strain has not yet been detected.

Meanwhile, JN.1 continues to spread rapidly around the globe, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. Data so far does not indicate increased illness severity from the new strain, according to WHO.

There aren't enough new COVID-19 cases in Lebanon so far “to perform sequencing of the virus,” and determine whether or not the new subvariant has arrived, Nada Ghosn, the Health Ministry's director of epidemiology tracking, told L’Orient Today.

Testing for a new variant of COVID-19 cannot be possible until the COVID-19 “winter wave hits,” which is “expected at the end of December/the beginning of January,” Ghosn added.

According to Ghosn, Lebanon has transitioned from the summer wave of COVID-19, which spanned from August to November, to the current flu wave, dominated by seasonal flu subtypes AH1pdm and AH3.

She added that COVID-19 in Lebanon “is no longer a pandemic but [rather] seasonal.”

The past four weeks have seen a three percent positivity rate for hospital inpatients tested for COVID-19, with a much steeper 24 percent rate for flu, according to the Health Ministry’s respiratory infection surveillance report, prepared by Ghosn and published on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Ghosn recommended that high-risk groups, including the elderly, those with chronic diseases and young individuals consider annual shots for both COVID-19 and flu as a preventative measure.

Asked whether home tests are reliable in detecting the COVID virus, Ghosn endorsed WHO-approved tests.