The Hague: The EU’s drug watchdog on Tuesday urged anti-Covid jabs to be updated to combat it ahead of a second round of vaccinations. new version This virus is still killing thousands of people.

The most widely circulating COVID variant worldwide is now JN.1, which has overtaken the XBB family as the target of most recent vaccines. European Medicines Agency Said.

The Amsterdam-based watchdog’s emergency task force said it has “recommended updating COVID-19 vaccines to target the new variant JN.1 for 2024-2025.” vaccination campaign” the EMA said.

some 4,500 covid death Was reported in March World Health Organization Nearly 275,000 new cases have been reported globally, it said in its latest epidemiological update.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned in January that although COVID-19 is “no longer a global health emergency, the virus is still spreading, changing and killing.”

EMA urged vaccine makers With marketing authorization to contact the agency.

“Companies developing new COVID-19 vaccines that do not currently target JN.1 are also encouraged to contact the EMA to discuss strategies for changing the composition of their vaccines,” the EMA said. is encouraged.”

Tedros announced the end of COVID-19 as an international public health emergency in May 2023, more than three years after the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China in late 2019.