XE or not? Maharashtra reports first case, centre disagrees

A new Coronavirus subvariant has made its way to India and the first case was detected in the financial hub of the country, Mumbai. However, on Wednesday, a member of the Maharashtra government’s Covid-19 task assured the citizens that there was no need to panic about the detection of the XE variant of the virus.

Dr. Shashank Joshi through his Twitter account cited official sources while saying, “FastQ files in respect of the sample, which is being said to be ‘XE’ variant were analysed in detail by genomic experts of INSACOG who have inferred that the genomic constitution of this variant does not correlate with the genomic picture of ‘XE’ variant.”

Joshi further said, “Mumbai XE variant case occurred in first week in March from an international traveler who fully recovered but Genomic data is out today. No need to panic, follow covid appropriate behavior.”

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned about the new subvariant, typically a hybrid strain of two Omicron subvariants. The international public health body, stated that the XE variant of the virus is more transmissible than any other Covid strain so far.

 

Earlier, this week, the UN health agency flagged the emergence of the new coronavirus variant XE- a hybrid of the BA.1 and BA.2 variations of Omicron that was the cause of third-wave across the globe and also with origins from South Africa.

The XE variant has raised more concerns around the globe, As per WHO the combination of the variant is 10% more transmiable than other variants.

India has not officially reported any confirmed cases of the XE variant. The Mumbai civic body on Wednesday announced the first case of the XE variant, though the central government disagreed with the findings.