Covid19 cases are rising again as a new variant begins to circulate in some parts of the world. The World Health Organization said Wednesday  the rise is primarily in the eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia and western Pacific regions.

Airport screening  in the United States has detected the new variant in travelers arriving from those regions to destinations in California, Washington state, Virginia and New York.

The new variant is called NB.1.8.1. It arrives as the United States’ official stance on COVID-19 vaccination is changing. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that COVID-19 shots are no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women — a move immediately questioned by several public health experts.

The new variant, increasing globally, had by mid-May reached nearly 11% of sequenced samples reported. The WHO has designated it a “variant under monitoring” and considers the health risks at the global level with current vaccines expected to remain effective.

The WHO said some western Pacific countries have reported increases in COVID cases and hospitalizations, but there’s nothing so far to suggest that the disease associated with the new variant is more severe compared to other variants.

WHO says the new ‘Strategic and operational plan for coronavirus disease threat management: at a glance’ sets out the global framework for supporting Member States in the sustained, integrated, evidence-based management of coronavirus disease threats, including MERS, and potential novel coronavirus diseases of public health importance.

It emphasises long-term, routine management of coronavirus diseases, embedded within national healthcare and health emergency systems and aligned with broader respiratory disease management strategies. The plan builds on and supersedes previous WHO strategic preparedness and response plans for COVID-19 and MERS. The new plan is consistent with

“Standing Recommendations for COVID-19, which have been extended. This ‘At a glance’ document is released to provide a high-level overview of the plan in advance of the release of the full form,” WHO said.

As May18 ,2025, there were 518 NB.1.8.1 sequences submitted to GISAID [7] from 22 countries, representing 10.7 percent of the globally available sequences in epidemiological week 17 of 2025 April 21 to 27 2025). While still low numbers, this is a significant rise in prevalence from 2.5 percent four weeks prior in epidemiological week 14 of 2025 (March 31 to April 6’ 2025), T Between epidemiological weeks 14 and 17 of 2025, NB.1.8.1 increased in prevalence in all the three WHO regions that are consistently sharing SARSCoV-2 sequences, i.e. an increase from 8.9 percent to 11.1 percent for the Western Pacific region (WPR), from 1.6 percent to 4.9 percent for the Region of the Americas (AMR), and from 1.0 percent to 6.0 percent for the European Region (EUR). There are only 5 NB.1.8.1 sequences from the South East Asia Region (SEAR), and none from the from the African Region (AFR) and the East Mediterranean Region (EMR).